A gleaming temporary metropolis known as the White City was constructed in Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, and the result was a bizarre pastiche of backward jingoism (the fair ostensibly celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Americas, after all) and forward-thinking technology (the most famous before-his-time genius, Nikola Tesla, demonstrated alternating current in the exposition’s Electricity Building). The Disney connection is even evident here, as Walt himself was inspired by the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a landmark celebration of the American spirit that marked the true beginning of the country’s place at the table with the great European powers who’d dominated the 19th century. That’s particularly true for pushing-40 protagonist Booker DeWitt, a hard-boiled New York City private investigator with a shady past and a willingness to get his hands dirty in order to erase his considerable debts-even if it means heading for Columbia, a mysterious breakaway American republic floating above the clouds off the coast of Maine. It’s 1912, and the world is a rougher, crueler place. This experience belongs to them as much as any gamer. But Western players who are drawn to the impressive, imaginative worlds and staggering details of Japanese game design will find themselves quite at home in BioShock Infinite, even if they don’t necessarily consider themselves devotees of the genre. Now, I’m not suggesting that BioShock Infinite will end up as some runaway hit in Japan (though it certainly deserves to) it’s likely that the game’s primary audience will still tend toward American fans of first-person shooters. Few American game designers have the obsessive, microscopic-level sensibilities of auteurs like Hideo Kojima or Suda51-but Levine is most assuredly one of them. Anyone who’s been to Japan can tell you that this seemingly absurd fascination with minutiae extends across all levels of society, including game development. And everything is scrubbed astonishingly clean so that every visitor can view the park as intended. Every costume design is painstakingly reproduced.
Every last stairwell and streetlamp serves a purpose and has meaning. Irrational Games creative director Ken Levine typed up screenplays in Hollywood back in the early ’90s before he ever shipped his first title, so he understands the paramount importance of building an enthralling world, painting a believable picture, and providing the player with the tools to immerse themselves in his creations as much as technology allows. His 2007 undersea opus, BioShock, was the thinking person’s action game, bringing thoughtful contemplation to the too-often-brainless genre of the first-person shooter.ĭisney appeals to that same sensibility in fans around the world, but particularly in Japan Tokyo Disneyland is the most-visited theme park outside of the United States for a reason. What do a crooning French candelabra and a steel-drummin’ Trinidadian crustacean have to do with a Massachusetts-based game developer helmed by a Vassar-educated drama major? A supreme, almost fanatical attention to detail, for one. In Japan, one American brand reigns supreme over all others, however. Harland Sanders, of all people, among them-most have failed to properly consider the specific tastes endemic to the archipelago’s culture. While a few high-profile exceptions succeeded-folksy Kentuckian restaurateur Col. Blatant spoilers in the title or thumbnail will either be removed or auto-tagged for spoilers.įor comment spoilers: - Use >!BioShock!<, it will appear as BioShock.For the last four decades, countless American corporations have tried and failed to break into the lucrative but famously fickle Japanese market.
#BIOSHOCK INFINITE VIGORS DEMO SERIES#
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