Earlier this week I spoke to Ed Beach, Lead Designer on the Civilization V: Gods & Kings expansion, as well as the upcoming Brave New World expansion. I asked Beach for his thoughts on Civ V designer Jon Shafer's recent self-criticisms regarding Civilization V's one unit per tile system and leader AI quirks. "He was a little harsh on it," said Beach. "And I won't try to guess as to exactly what his frame of mind was, where he's coming from."

"Unit stacking can be a problem in Civ V, and I definitely think we've been acknowledging that for a while," continued Beach. "In Gods & Kings we made a change so that embarked land units could stack with naval units, because there was a lot of congestion out in the seas. So, there were definitely issues, but I'm still a big fan of one unit per tile. I think it improves the combat in so many ways, there's so much more tactical maneuvering and positioning."

Though he didn't address Civ V's notoriously fickle AI leaders, Beach went on to explain how the one unit per tile system has been improved over time.

"I think you just have to make sure, when you're designing a game like this with a one unit per tile system, that you're setting out for one unit per tile where it's helpful for you, like in spreading out the combat units and adding that tactical positioning play to the military side of it, and you're not enforcing one unit per tile rules in places where it's just getting in the player's way.

"So, I'm a big fan of one unit per tile, but I think we didn't quite hit it right with the initial release, in terms of where it was important to enforce it, and where we could just relax the rules a little bit. As long as we keep that in the forefront of our thinking, we'll be fine."



I also pointed out that Civilization is a series which is known to improve over time with expansions, but wondered what informs the decision to tear it all down and start over with a new numbered game.

"You want to set things up where you have a great foundation to build upon, and when you've invested in building that initial framework, you want to leverage that and get as many cool systems in to play off of that base as possible," said Beach.

"There is a point in time where, as you put each of those systems in, you learn a lot about the base game...and you see where things are working, and where things are still holding you back a little bit. You start to get to the point where, those things you can't change about the base game, because they're so fundamental to this particular iteration, are holding you back from what you want to try, then it's time to start looking at a new foundation."

I acknowledged that Beach obviously couldn't hint at plans for Civilization VI, to which he responded, "It is true that there are now 43 civs in the game, and the most any Civ has had up until now was 34. We actually hit 34 with Gods & Kings, and now we're going to be nine beyond it. So, that particular number is getting way up there."

Preview by Philippa Warr

A fire has been raging through Paris for the past four decades. Also, Jesus has just been born.

"The caravan unit is essentially a 'business camel' who brokers trade agreements."
That's the news from the other end of the bank of desks as I settle in to preview Civilization V: Brave New World - an expansion aimed primarily at spicing up the late stages of the game. My own Parisians, however, remain unroasted and un-Jesused because I've spent the last few turns ignoring Napoleon and trying to work out whether it would be prudent to build a windmill.

The windmill situation is clearly too complicated so I build a caravan unit instead. This is mostly because the caravan unit is essentially a "business camel" who goes off to other cities and brokers trade agreements on my behalf. In my head he has a pinstripe suit and a briefcase full of important documents.



The caravan appears as an option as soon as you research animal husbandry and creates trade routes. Looking to other civilisations, the most profitable trade routes are built between cities with few resources in common - business camels appreciate a diverse portfolio. But trade routes can also be established between two of your own cities. If one has a workshop, the trade route can export production giving a boost to cities founded late game which would otherwise be outpaced at every opportunity.

"Brave New World tries to deal with the late game peaceful play problem."
As time passes and you get deeper into the expansion you'll realise that the roving business camel was foreshadowing. Brave New World is actively trying to deal with the late game peaceful play problem - namely that you end up hemmed in on all sides with no will to explore, hitting "Next Turn" and eating biscuits.

"It's been a symptom of all Civ games - the late game just isn't as compelling as the beginning," admits Dennis Shirk, senior producer. Firaxis' solution? To prod you into activity via a mixture of international trade (business camels plus cargo ships), cultural scuffles, and the introduction of a World Congress for equal quantities of diplomacy and dickbaggery sans frontiers.



Culture now comes in two flavours: defensive and offensive. Defensive culture is the stuff of previous Civ iterations and is created by building wonders or landmarks. In Brave New World it serves to counter aggressive culture: tourism.

"Invest in tourism and artwork becomes a weapon. You're Charles Saatchi with a diplomatic passport."
Invest in tourism and artwork becomes a weapon. Your civilisation can now gobble up a great artist and spit out one of their famous real-world creations to be installed in a cultural institutions. Pair your burgeoning art scene with increased interaction with other civilisations and tourism flourishes: you're Charles Saatchi with a diplomatic passport.

The World Congress also appears in the latter part of the game; a cyclical system where two players - the host civilisation and the one with most delegates - make proposals. Nations preferring the diplomatic route to victory (or just partial to a spot of political wrangling) can spend turn after turn lobbying for support, indulging in espionage or trading votes to get their preferred policies approved.



These can be positive mandates for the good of humanity or a chance to indulge spite and retribution. "It's not always going to be a clean and shiny, optimistic future," observes Shirk. Indeed, the expansion's title, "Brave New World", explicitly references Huxley's dystopian novel and the ideological and cultural upheavals of the twentieth century.

"Don't expect Firaxis to stop tinkering with Civ V just yet."
But, whether you choose to play as a cynic or an optimist, Brave New World is hellbent on keeping you actively participating to the final turn. So although the expansion tentatively marks Civ V as complete don't expect the tinkering to stop just yet.

"We've already got updates on our schedule," says Shirk. "You can't know how the ideal arc for a game is going to fall until a million people are playing it - we want to have the best version of the game out there."

This week’s debate asks whether or not a film adaptation of BioShock Infinite could work, or if it misses the point. "No," says the man from Michigan: Evan thinks that BioShock's themes and intricate plot don't suit a Hollywood reproduction. On the other side, Tyler doesn’t see why Infinite’s great story couldn’t become a great film, if all else goes well.

Read the debate below, continue it in the comments, and jump to the next page for opinions from the community. Evan, you have the floor:



Evan: I enjoy the wave of discussion that BioShock games inspire whenever they release. A lot of the comment threads and chatter about Infinite have circled around storytelling—whether Infinite’s intricate ending was a hit or a miss; whether Elizabeth was effective as a companion character; and whether Infinite would make a good film.

It’s an interesting idea, but I’m skeptical that BioShock Infinite: The Movie wouldn’t do anything other than soil our existing, pretty-darn-great opinion of the fiction.

Tyler: It might do that. It’s a very entertaining story told in a very entertaining way—interactively—and a movie can’t replicate that. But I’m devil’s advocate in this debate, and I say it might actually be a good movie.

Film is a different medium, so we’re talking about an adaptation. We’re talking about stripping away the game to see what’s left, and using that to build something new. And what is left? An intricate, fascinating story with characters I still want to know more about. That’s a fantastic place for a script to start, and with the right vision behind it, we’d get to experience something we love in a different way.



Evan: What would that film look like? I know it’s unfair to ask you spontaneously become a screenwriter, but what would a BioShock movie be about?

Tyler: I think we’d most likely see a new story in the “BioShock universe,” and that’s probably the best choice, but for the sake of argument I’ll test the idea of seeing Booker’s story, as we played it.

Obviously, the film would spend more time establishing Booker’s relationship with Elizabeth than showing him shooting dudes in the head. Actually, it might do a better job of that. The game’s cutscenes were fine, but Elizabeth was a very confused character when dynamically reacting to Booker’s violence. A film wouldn’t need to make that story concession, because it wouldn’t have to support gameplay.

Likewise, Comstock could be more intimidating, and all the foreshadowing could be better paced and less heavy-handed. Film is a one-sitting, two-or-so hour medium. It wouldn’t have to repeat itself to remain understandable and communicate its themes.

And when it comes to shooting dudes, imagine a choreographed skyline battle. Oh man, Evan, how cool would that be? Acrobatic ultraviolence is fun to play, but it’s also a helluva lot of fun to watch.

Evan: I think you’re underestimating how well BioShock’s good things would migrate onto film. So much of what happens hinges on a first-person perspective, on having control given and taken away during different moments. The Voxophones—being able to get on-demand exposition, essentially. Exploration. Think about the elegant way Infinite introduces Vigors with contextual, interactive carnival games. I feel like a film’s only solution to explaining something like Vigors—and they’d have to, right?—would be clumsy dialogue.

Tyler: It’s true that interactivity helps with exposition, but why couldn’t the film Booker play those same carnival games? And in this version, we could actually see his astonishment. In the game, he takes it all very matter of factly, I thought.

Regarding Voxophones—OK, you got me. Films are much shorter, and no one would accept watching Booker listen to audio logs. Every medium has limitations, strengths and weaknesses. I think the story could still be told, but we’d lose a portion of the backstory, the sense of being in a place at a point in time that you get from examining your surroundings in the game. The film medium would make up for that with the things it’s better suited for.

Evan: The idea of Film Booker just miming what you did as a player sounds awful. It undermines the meaning of those first impressions you have as a player. It gives me two slightly-different versions of the same events. And worst of all, it indicates to me that an Infinite movie at its best would just be a series of references.

The Watchmen film adaptation demonstrated that not every respected work of fiction should be forced onto film. The graphic novel was too long to make into a movie, and separating some of its thematic heart into a direct-to-DVD extra (Tales of the Black Freighter) was a clumsy solution that meant you were left to judge the movie itself based on how well its creators converted the frames and speech bubbles (it’s word for word, in some scenes) into moving pictures.

That’s not storytelling. It’s a paint-by-numbers exercise that lacks its own purpose, and it arises from film creators—understandably, to some extent—consecrating an original text that’s really, really good. And the alternative to rigid reproduction in instances like BioShock and Infinite isn’t any better, I think. You’d be deviating and telling a secondary story within a place like Columbia. I don’t think that’d be any more interesting, considering how integral Comstock, Booker and Elizabeth are to the setting and its downfall.



Tyler: I liked Watchmen, actually, but I was just giving an example of how interactivity isn’t wholly intertwined with Infinite’s story or the telling of it—of course I wouldn’t expect or want a film to mimic the game exactly. It should have its own purpose, and adaptations generally do.

We’re constantly telling and retelling the same stories in different ways. Are we bored of seeing adaptations of Much Ado About Nothing? Should Joss Whedon not have bothered with his new film?

Evan: I don’t buy it. An unusual amount of BioShock’s themes are contingent on interaction. Booker’s redemption and absolution are intertwined with your agency as a player, just as BioShock’s twist on free will depends on the creating the illusion of it.

I’m sorry that you liked Watchmen, but surely not every excellent work of fiction should be put into production as films, right? Game movies have an awful track record—what would you say is the best adaptation of a game?

Tyler: Uhh. I guess Prince of Persia wasn’t a total disaster? No, I can’t defend game adaptations. They’re mostly just awful.

But why is that? Is it that games can’t be adapted well, or is it that they haven’t been adapted well? There are tons of horrible book adaptations, but they’re attempted way more often than games, so we have a bigger sampling, and there are good ones in there.

A BioShock Infinite film could be terrible, but if we’re asking whether or not its story is well-suited for film, I think it is. It has a visually impressive setting, interesting characters, a fast-moving plot which takes sharp turns. Yes, its thematic connection to gaming would be lost, but it could turn the camera around on film in similar ways. I’d be interested to find out how it does that.

Evan: In the case of the original BioShock: if it was easy, it would’ve happened by now. What does it say that Ken Levine “killed” the most recent attempt at a BioShock film?

Tyler: It isn’t easy. Levine wanted Gore Verbinski’s direction and a bigger budget. He cares about how his creative work is adapted. He wants it meet certain standards, to respect his vision and introduce the vision of people he trusts. That makes total sense, and doesn’t suggest he hates the whole idea.

On that line of reasoning, what does it say that Gabe Newell is interested in collaborating with J.J. Abrams? I don’t love Abrams, personally, but is Newell known for bad creative decisions or being blasé about the official treatment of Valve’s characters and stories? It’s the opposite—he previously turned down Hollywood’s attempts to court Valve. Now he must see something he likes.

Evan: I think Valve’s fiercely protective approach to adaptations of its games is a great starting point. But yeah, part of my objection is based on the assumption that Hollywood People and focus testing would mutate BioShock into something that it isn’t. If Ken Levine thinks that a BioShock movie needs a $200 million budget, wouldn’t it by necessity need to make creative compromises to appeal to a large enough audience to be profitable? It’s an impossible situation: if $80 million isn’t enough to do it properly according to Irrational’s creative director, I can’t imagine they’d be able to retain full creative freedom and avoid making something that wasn’t watered-down at that level of fiscal risk.

Tyler: It would definitely mutate—it’s an adaptation and the script has to work for the medium—but I don’t see why it would necessarily mutate in a negative “watered-down by Hollywood” way. What’s to water down? It’s already a Hollywood-style story!

I don’t mean that in a bad way. What I mean is that as much as we might want to think we’re somehow above “mainstream entertainment,” Infinite is a gory, action-packed thriller. Yes, it has a complex plot and interesting themes, and so do some big-budget movies. I’m not talking about the latest Die Hard, obviously—I’m looking to Christopher Nolan as a good example. Can you tell me you wouldn’t be just a little excited if he were directing a BioShock film?

Evan: I’d be curious and concerned. The proposition of “two things I love... together!” is such a peanut-butter-and-chocolate way of thinking about creative projects, and I’d like to see gamers cut that s#*& out.

Tyler: Yeah, "this and this are good, so let's put them together" is not a viable creative or business strategy 99.9 percent of the time, but I didn't make Nolan my example just because I like him—he has experience with adaptations, and the kind of tone we might see in a BioShock film. I think Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) would also be a great choice of director.

Evan: I’m still skeptical that someone as talented as Bird or Nolan could overcome the inherent challenges of adapting something like BioShock. I think it’s important to remember that BioShock Infinite is distinct from successful movies like The Avengers or Batman—it isn’t a spacious, decades-old body of work that a writer could pick and choose what characters and story arcs to include.

But more fundamentally, I want to prompt you and our readers to really examine why they want a BioShock movie. Are we just curious about the act of judging a movie studio’s copy-paste job? Are we just crudely lobbying “I want more of something I liked!” and not thinking critically about how being a video game contributed to why we liked BioShock to begin with?

When Watchmen creator Alan Moore was asked how he felt about the graphic novel’s movie adaptation, he very cynically responded: “I find modern form to be quite bullying. It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms.”

Tyler: Alan Moore is a convenient figurehead for your argument, but I think that’s hyperbolic and cynical (which I guess is what I’d expect from Alan Moore, and I’ll enjoy the film he so despises despite him). You do make good points, though. A bit of the desire is curiosity, as seeing someone else’s interpretation of something we know intimately, like a game we’ve played multiple times, is inherently interesting. And I think we also want to see BioShock succeed in other media because we want to see something we care about attract a wider audience.

But there’s a purer desire, too: we want a film because the game was entertaining and thought-provoking, and we want more entertaining and thought-provoking things. And to get back to the original question, I think BioShock Infinite is plenty rich enough to make this hypothetical film good, or even great.

Now, do I think it would be good, and do I really want my version of events redacted or rephrased on a movie screen? For the sake of this debate, I plead the fifth.

That’s the debate! As always, these debates are exercises meant to reveal alternate viewpoints—sometimes including perspectives we wouldn't normally explore—and cultivate discussion, so continue it in the comments, and jump to the next page for more opinions from the community.





@pcgamer Would be the best movie ever! If created correctly anyway :)— James King (@iKingyx) April 10, 2013


@pcgamer I haven't finished it, but I would like to see a movie made of Rapture pre-Bioshock 1. I want to watch how the people get consumed.— Peter Nguyen (@AZNguyen) April 10, 2013


@pcgamer If you think it could you've missed the entire point of the game. The entire premise only works if it's a game.— Alan Royle (@adroyle) April 10, 2013


@pcgamer Booker vs. Gordon, even better— cdomega (@cdomega) April 10, 2013


@pcgamer Yes and no. It'd probably be a mediocre movie with an interesting premise. They'd have to develop the character cast a bit more.— Zach (@ZahaianGhost) April 10, 2013

Spoiler Alert! Don’t read this post or its comments unless you’ve finished BioShock Infinite. Experience it for yourself so you can come back and analyze it with us when you’re done. Don't even scroll down a little. There are screenshots.

Those of you still reading can appreciate why we say that—the ending needs to be experienced fresh, but not talking about it is excruciating, even when your friends are cupping their ears. We’ve been going back and forth about Infinite for a few days, and that conversation comes in two flavors: the technical exercise of untangling all the interdimensional spaghetti, and our critical response to it.

The best way to express that conversation is with the conversation itself, so Evan and Tyler have written out their key points in the dialog below. Evan, you have the floor:

Evan: Let’s talk this out, Tyler. I think it’s fair to call Infinite’s ending one of the most intricate ever. With multiple realities being a theme, mechanic, and plot device, there’s a bunch of inherent complexity to the story. Part of the fun is unraveling the ball of quantum yarn Irrational throws at you, but more simply: did you like the ending, and how it was executed?

Tyler: I did! Well, mostly. I've been untangling it for a couple days, and that it can be untangled is pleasing. It gives me the same kind of pleasure I get from solving logic problems or riddles. Thematically, though, it's less appealing.

Evan: Yeah, I feel similarly. I feel like Infinite’s appeal lies in its complexity more than the characters and the game’s theme, which were the strengths of the original BioShock. But before we dig into more analysis, why don’t we try and unpackage what happened?



Tyler: The Internet has already done some great detective work on this, with pretty graphs! Here’s the gist: After surviving Wounded Knee, Booker DeWitt can either be baptized or not baptized. If he’s baptized, he goes on to become Comstock and create Columbia. If he refuses, he becomes a degenerate drunk. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Now here’s the conflict: The Comstock version of Booker can’t have kids, but he can travel between dimensions, so he invades the dimension where unbaptized Booker exists and buys his daughter Anna, who he renames to Elizabeth. Booker goes back to reclaim her, but is caught in a loop in which he always fails. The loop is broken at the end, we presume, when Anna becomes a Time Lord and Booker returns to the baptism and dies in place of the version of him who would become Comstock.

Or not, we can’t be sure.

Evan: Bingo. It’s not a coincidence that Booker and Elizabeth break into the song “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” near the middle of the game. That song represents one of the central questions Infinite is posing—is it possible to make a change, to be absolved, to reverse a bad decision... like selling your daughter to “wipe away the debt,” as Booker does. It’s a pretty relatable theme—it’s human to make mistakes, and it’s human to fantasize about unmaking them.

http://youtu.be/yx8GowKaRpM?t=1m9s

Tyler: It’s a redemption story without a redemption, which makes it more tragic. The hero is the villain, even after Comstock is erased, because Booker is the same drunk who would’ve sold his own daughter (unless he somehow remembers his Columbia adventure, but I’d expect a plot-device nosebleed to take the place of that.)

This theme of dichotomies and sameness runs through the whole game. I took the pivotal baptism to mean that we can’t escape our past or wash it away. Whether or not he refuses, Booker is still a jackass. Even if we confront what we've done, it may still consume us.

Booker’s death in that scene meant to me that we can’t change the past, but we can try to change the future...and it really helps if we have a few interdimensional lighthouses. I don’t mean to sound glib. I didn't take it as a positive message, which is welcome. But how did you feel about how we got there?

Evan: A tiny thing that bugged me was the way the twist got telegraphed before you come face to face with Comstock. During the big airship battle at the end he says something along the lines of “Well, you always had a penchant for self-destruction,” which was too much of a wink and a nudge for me. I knew right then that Comstock was Booker.

Tyler: I finished the game at about 4 a.m., so a lot of that foreshadowing bounced off my eyelids. Looking back, it was pretty heavy handed, but I liked that line. It was fun to go “Ooooohhhh” when things started clicking. Figuring out that the Luteces are the same person, and that the coin flip at the beginning represents the number of loops, was neat.

Evan: So, yeah, I think we agree that the technical exercise of mapping out the plot is enjoyable. It reminds me of piecing together the underlying logic of Inception or Lost with my friends. But did we like the ending? Awful boss battle aside, I liked the original BioShock’s conclusion more. Hints are scattered throughout Infinite, but I didn’t like how much exposition and explanation was crammed into the final few minutes.

Tyler: Yes, absolutely. There’s this slow build during the first three-quarters of the game, where you know something is off, and then someone hits the fast-forward button and woosh, we’re traveling through time and space explaining everything to wrap it all up



Evan: Yeah, I wasn’t thrilled with that execution. It leaves you with questions that are fun to unwrap, but in the moment I felt slightly disappointed. Comstock is so central to the premise of the game, but he was weirdly underdeveloped, and that undermined the meaning of everything for me.

Comstock didn’t pester you in the way that Andrew Ryan did. He wasn’t as enigmatic or menacing. I didn’t feel let inside his head. I didn’t feel like I was being constantly watched. I’m not saying that they need to be perfect mirrors of one another in order to be good characters, but killing him felt like an eventuality, and Ryan’s death in BioShock was a dramatic surprise. Infinite also gives you less time after that climax to walk around the world with that blood on your hands.

Related to that, and at the risk of sounding completely cold, I’m not sure how much I cared about Elizabeth at the end. I think the insane asylum level made me care less about her; I had a hard time accepting that her personality just shifted into being so misantropic. I didn’t like how that level fed into her being a damsel in distress rather than the capable, human, gifted person.

Tyler: I disagree about the asylum. Elizabeth became helpless right as I was putting together that this had happened before—the message, to me, was that Booker is the helpless one.

But then, yeah, Comstock becomes a pawn—a willing victim who somehow underestimates Anna and the Luteces—and Anna becomes practically omnipotent, which I didn't like at all. She figures it all out so she can explain it to the player, but I’d have preferred to keep discovering the truth with her. It would have been great to see both Anna and Booker react to the revelation that Booker is her father. That would have been a character-driven scene, instead of a quantum physics-driven scene, which the entire ending is.

Evan: It makes me wonder what Infinite would’ve been like if it had fewer characters, or a mute protagonist. Anyway, what about that moment where you enter Rapture? It’s fan servicey, but I LOOOOVED it. Maybe I just miss being in that world.

Tyler: From the perspective of a fan, I love that the Rapture cameo lets me build theories—like, say, that Andrew Ryan is Booker DeWitt. Comstock is much older than Booker, so we already know that time is irrelevant and BioShock taking place later than Infinite doesn’t negate this theory.

But as we’ve established, that kind of speculative fun is only really fun after the fact, when I’m going back and forth with a friend like we are now.



Evan: We’re friends? Aww.

Yeah, being thrown into Rapture filled me with this intense curiosity about how far they were going to take that scene, that visit. And I think I would’ve liked the ending more if that moment were more than an empty room.

Tyler: I can’t deny that it made me a little giddy, but it reminded me I was playing a game, because all these different worlds and possibilities could have been interpreted to mean “all these different games and players.”

That’s interesting—turning the camera around and pointing it at the medium—but it was winking so hard it squished my relationship with Booker and Anna (if her becoming a god hadn't already) and made it about my relationship with the game, the series, and Ken Levine. Not that I don’t want to hug Ken Levine for making something so clearly meaningful to me.

But, there are technical issues, too. Some of the sound mixing was off—I couldn't hear half of what Ghost Mom was saying—and I can’t be the only one who started playing a Voxophone only to have an important line of dialog interrupt it, and then the sound of munching corpse food interrupt that. I know I should have taken it slower, but standing still and listening is hard when there’s so much to interact with.

Evan: Mmm, corpse food. But yeah, I think we’re coming to a similar conclusion: Infinite’s ending was cerebrally satisfying, and BioShock’s was emotionally manipulative in the best way possible and more interesting on the merits of its characters.



Tyler: Totally. Both have merits, and that’s a great point with which to conclude my critique of the execution. My biggest issue is that BioShock’s emotional narrative can be decoded by playing it naturally—however that may be for each individual—whereas Infinite is a mess if you don’t play it in a specific way. Listening to every Voxophone is essential if you want a fulfilling ending, and that’s not communicated well. There are people reading this because the credits rolled and they looked at their screens and said, “Uh, what?” I think that’s something storytellers want to avoid.

Evan: Yeah, there’s a ton of vital stuff that’s dropped in the Voxophones. There’s literally one called “The Source of Her Powers” from Lutece (“It would seem the universe does not like its peas mixed with its porridge”). Again, back to BioShock: I think it was clever for Irrational to give Rapture multiple mechanisms for the game to talk to the player: your radio, Rapture’s PA system, and audio diaries.

Tyler: Even so, whether it takes one long playthrough, two playthroughs, or reading a thread on NeoGAF, Infinite is a fantastic logic puzzle to figure out. And when you do get the complete story, the themes are there, if a bit overshadowed by all the wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

We expect BioShock to make us think and to reconfigure tropes, and Infinite does that despite the mechanical approach to narrative that tends to happen when you deal with interdimensional time travel. That’s very praise-worthy, and more than we’ve come to expect from games.

Evan: Yeah, shortcomings included, it’d be foolish not to celebrate an ambitious story like this. We need more of them. We need more big publishers to take creative risks and trust their designers to have big, insane dreams that are worthy of deconstructing and writing 2,000-word responses to.

BioShock Infinite lead Ken Levine addressed the ongoing debate about violence in games in an NPR interview (via GameSpot) yesterday. During the talk, Levine defended games by stating that using violence as a narrative device is as old as storytelling itself.

"Violence, for better or for worse, goes back to the dawn of narrative and is a part of the storyteller's toolkit," Levine said. Games, like all new things, are subject to extra scrutiny, he suggested, using his own childhood memories of nerding about in Dungeons & Dragons as an example.

"I wasn't a very popular kid," he explained. "I was a nerdy, little kid. And I didn't have friends because I wasn't very good at socializing. And I found Dungeons & Dragons—if you remember, back in the '70s there was this big human cry about Dungeons & Dragons; kids were going off and killing themselves and disappearing into caves. And that happened with comic books and that happened with rock and roll music.

"My point is, for me personally, games were a way around being 'that kid,'" he continued. "I'm not speaking as a scientist here. We can argue the science, but I'm not the best guy to do that."

Telltale has dusted off its green, felt battlefield of chips and difficult-to-remember card combinations for Poker Night 2, and it's calling up another quirky cast hailing from games and TV/film to humorously overreact whenever you're dealt a superior hand. You'll practice your poker face against Borderlands' Clatrap, Brock Samson from The Venture Bros. show, the beady-eyed Sam from Sam & Max, and the always-groovy Ash Williams from Army of Darkness.

Telltale explains the stakes: "Poker Night 2 will offer the chance to win Bounty Unlocks: rewards for use within other games when special goals are achieved. With cunning and skill, players will unlock prizes, including exclusive skins and heads for use within Borderlands 2 and character accessories for Team Fortress 2."

I'd also advise against any shady movements, because Portal's very own GLaDOS is Poker Night 2's dealer, and she has a tendency to fire up a flamethrower or two for dishonesty. And for possessing flesh. In any case, you'll be able to grab the game near the end of this month.