Columbia Audio Diaries

* See also Audio Diaries
* See also Kinetoscopes
* See also BaSx_Audio_Diary_Analysis and (Rapture) Audio_Diary_Analysis
* See also Storytime
sift these to seperate pages and under subentry for speaker
In Infinite BS You Got THIS Retarded Thing
Don't these lazy dimwitted gamemakers KNOW how real Record Players actually work/operate ( and how $#%^ing fragile they were )???
And that is 'CUBED Stupid' for supposedly doing a SOUND RECORDING with a needle mechanism - Sorry, not with THIS thing ...
DISKS - WORSE EVEN IN THE OLDER TYPES WHICH WERE OF VERY BRITTLE MATERIAL - for something supposedly being carried ? Preposterous. 
This is some seriously STUPID/LAZY TECH IGNORANCE ( and the game's magic Quantum Particles ain't no alibi here ). They should have said something like : "Magical memories recorded in DNA made from 'entangled' quantum particles" to at least attribute it to their dim Faux-Science ( to be Consistent ... ) But then, there would be so many other greater wonders in Columbia which would then have the game lose all the 'nostalgia' aspect they were cloning (badly) from the first two games - at least in SteamPunk they apply the Aether/Panabulum/etc ... 
If they were even mildly advanced in Columbia, then they would AT LEAST have Wire Recorders, and for the needed 'electronics' use some of those Audion Tubehttps://www.innowiki.org/audion-tube/ things ...
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More Infinite BS Regurgitation Without Due Thought :
VOX-O-Phone Promotional Display pix
VOX-O-Phone - An even more derivative/copied/duplicated lame-brained concept ( simply cloning the previous game ideas resulting in that ludicrously illogical mechanism -- just to make easy $$$ ) Had any of the game artists/designers ever operated a real disk-type Record Player to know what's wrong there ????? Do they KNOW it has a needle, and what happens with a real Record if you bumped that needle ??? Sorry, Quantumz doesn't fix this issue, and can't be used as an excuse.
SO do you carry that huge microphone around with you in order to do a recording ? Not the greatest for any spur-of-the-moment/impulsive recordings. Shouldn't the demonstration be of how it can record by itself, at the users convenience ??? I think they lost (or never understood) the original BioShock device's concept - that of a totally self-contained unit. ( Though those Rapture 'Accu Vox' were themselves a massive unwieldy 'brick', and themselves would have been MORE logical, and still be fully workable game-wise, as implemented as removable media - like a small palm-sized magnetic disk the player would find ).
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Voxophones - Some More Direct Audio Story - More Flavor ... ON AN IDIOTIC MACHINE :
The Infinite BS gamemakers used an absurd mechanism, something technically impossible at that time -- and THAT certainly with what their game prop looked like. They did it because Personal Voice inflections/accent/background sounds are much more interesting ( and flexible story-wise ) than the game media alternatives - Old pages of newspapers or Notes/Mail ( or strange giant signs ) that Booker would find laying on the ground ( The Players would ACTUALLY HAVE TO READ THEM ... ). 
Phone calls Booker picked up along the path ? ( You hear the ringing in the distance ) And 'that call' even having a dialog with Booker ( or even Elizabeth when SHE picked it up) talking back - That idea might've served a bit to 'lay some backstory' on the Player ( save that for the MMORPG Redo ).
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Simple Pervasive BS :
Personally, I think the Vox-o-Phones device was impressively ignorant of how real things have to work. But then the same can be said of the game's 'science' and 'engineering', 'religion', 'economics', 'history' and 'social understanding'. What matters if the catastrophically bad design of one pervasive little narrative device object is also presented ?
The objects shape/image 'gets across' the idea of what the object is - even to the mentally challenged. The game makers thus catered to the Mentally-Challenged. 'Dumbed Down' ... Players seen/treated as idiots. 
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Another Missed Infinite BS Opportunity -   'Record's :
Seriously, NO NEED for the stupid/absurd Huge machine on EVERY Voxophone Audio Dairy.
Shouldn't we have found lots of portable records ( for those too young to know what they are - those plastic disk things with grooves, usually having a recording on them and played upon a machine called "A Record Player" ) to pick up and listen to all over Columbia ? ( Prerecorded music/whatever - since the devices don't/can't record onto the media --- it just doesn't work that way despite what Infinite BS shows in its strange cobbled together Fantasy ). Cylinder formhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder recordings even better, as that 'was' the earlier format.
People listening to their Fink 'Port-a-Music' SHOULD have been a big thing in Columbia (if you would let those Lala-land Voxophone devices exist, then entertainment versions would be an even better/natural idea). Early ones worked (real world even in 1893) and were ALL mechanical ( later tube electronics came along, but even then it took far longer after that to make them 'portable' ).
How much music from 1893 could still be copyrighted ? Lots of Assets there free to grab and add to the game with minimal effort/cost. They could also play newly contrived Columbia-themed theater/stage show audios, as well as lots of 'Inspirational' talks/propaganda from the Prophet himself !!!
The problem with the writers of Infinite BS was they only thought 'big' ( overblown sizing of uninteresting mostly empty terrain, having a few mannequin-like inhabitants, etc ... ), when they should have been thinking 'BIG' -- as in better/richer detail ideas to create a plausible world, instead of merely the caricature backdrop for a rather lame shooter. It was actually simplified over what the previous games delivered. There coulda been lots more interactive goodies to fill-in that long linear slaughterhouse ramp plot.
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Use of Cylinder-type Recordings Lasted into the 1920s :
Cylinder type machines (similar to the first Edison ones) had the advantage of being able to Record.
Infinite BS implies recording on a 'hand wave' disk-type mechanism, which though 'pretty', has serious complications/defects in any Real World universe (( Looked 'good' I suppose in some early game design meeting, to many ignorant game developers )). In for a Pound of BS, in for a Ton ...
Those mechanisms making up those Infinite BS Vox-o-Phone Audio Diaries are in the "Top Ten Stupidest Things Seen In The Game" list.
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New Gearz ( for a 'Satire' Columbia Redo) - The Record Player HAT (It also shoots buzzsaw blades/poisoned disks ).
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Having Alot Of RECORDED Comstock Detractors Existing Would Make Little Sense :
Remember that Columbia is NOT the America of Today, or in 1912 OR ANYTIME. Levine somehow is having/thinking THIS whole warped place is in any way associated with "America" ?> This utterly ignorant rubbish ?? - Is it the result of a 'Public Education', or some recent era college "education" ??? ). 
Consider : that creating Audio Diaries in Columbia would be equivalent to : 'Voicing accusations about the Government of Hitler while living in Nazi Germany' - the self-incriminating Act of A Suicidal Moron. Tyrannical types get paranoid about anything and everything. Recordings ? That's suspicious behavior ...
Would the talker/recorder(Voxophone)/note-writer have a family they had to support/protect ? They could lose their job for talking (even a little) like that, and having the wrong people sometime hear it. In Columbia, you might be arrested for expressing such sentiments, your entire family might be as well. Such things would be something you only whispered at home, and NOT something to be 'recorded'. 
The Players may not realize that real people who actually spoke out that way in such oppressive historic environments were either very brave or had little to lose. 
In America then/now, they might look at you derisively and say, "Oh, you're one of those." In Columbia, however, they would say, "You are against the Prophet, one of those who wants to destroy Columbia !! Call a Policeman !!! NOW !!! " In Columbia, you can't leave. You are more trapped than any Black in the South who was being coerced by the KKK ( which is the nearest thing I can think of to how Ken Levine seems to have seen 1912 America ). 
Consider that you wouldn't do a lot of things "on impulse" because of the (often dire) repercussions which could/would result. I've explained what a person actually THERE would have to contend with -- something many people (these days in our safe little world) don't realize -- how different things are in such places, rather than here, where anybody ( at least where WE live in the world ) can say just about anything they want and not really worry that much about it. 
I catch in some of these games the writers framing things as if it is the world THEY currently live in - here safe in our modern world and country ( which many, living within, don't realize how lucky they are to be in ). Those Writers just didn't grasp the differences about such OTHER places. 
In a game I would have presenting such 'recorded' denouncements ( utilize that same storytelling vignette method ) with a sequence having some subsequent messages and evidence showing what happened to the unfortunate 'recording person' who thought they could talk AGAINST Comstock/That Society in Columbia. Make the discovery of a recording from somebody who was 'disappeared' (explaining maybe WHY they did such a dangerous thing). Then maybe by someone else commenting on the repercussions ( even of a Policeman who 'arrested' and sent the unwise 'traitorous' complainer to their terrible fate ). The happenings should not be pretty. 
The Vignette would do more than "tell" you. Lets not have the Vagueness so many Audio Diaries had in BioShock Rapture. Remember those people in the jail there in Columbia, some of them beaten to death ? That's the kind of thing Comstock and his cronies are shown to be capable of. It's not Columbia they would be concerned with, but themselves simply remaining alive ( what all might also happen to their family, etc ... ). 
Tyrants can do things worse than simply killing you. There is little to stop them. Inconvenient people just get murdered, but the tyrant wants fear to stop others from even thinking about doing ANY action against their power.
That's what I mean by the setting of the game, that in Columbia ( unlike in the REAL America, which Levine has rather strange views about ), FORCING you to follow their ideology would have full Official Sanction. Losing your job would be the least of the things they could do, and it seems people were trapped on Columbia - no running from it. 
The people in control of Columbia would be experts ( like the Nazis and the Soviets and a tad bit of the Jim Crow bunch ) at making what they do to you worse than death. Personally brave ? You have family/friends, they'll torture and kill them before your eyes. You are lucky if they just kill you, and don't have a mission to MAKE you believe as they do ( as they did in the USSR ). This kind of thing was institutionalized, and the people in power got very expert at getting results, when they had little to hold them in check. 
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Resistance ? If you are willing to take the consequences I've mentioned, then you might as well do enough to put a stop to the whole tyranny. With that whole Police State thing that Levine has created, there would be Informers EVERYWHERE, and the whole society is pretty well locked down, so you would have to be extra clever to get ANYTHING done.
To do this : 
* First to not give yourself away ( They missed the boat by not mentioning informers everywhere - good Police States don't get far without them ), You shouldn't start by leaving a declaration of your "Treason" Against the Prophet on a Voxophone. 
* Venting it out as an Audio Recording doesn't/can't reach enough people. Something public and done cleverly ( so you don't get caught ) would be a start. (( That idiocy of Daisy Fitzroy putting her face on posters 20 feet tall was incredibly stupid writing. ))
* Cutting the head off the snake would be an effective course -- Difficult, but probably a lot more effective than some piecemeal uprising that would be beaten down immediately. Taking the "Prophet" out of the equation would go a long way towards tearing down the system this bizarre fantasy is built on.
* You have to gather your own information - assuming you are in the underclass, it might be a while to get access to places to find out what/where the important things are, and how they work. You have to be careful who you can trust ( avoiding those Informers, ALL THE TIME ... ) The problem is : Could you find out enough and get to a place you could do something significant ( like kill Comstock himself, or other high level underlings ) ?
* You might actually find that your best bet is getting back down to earth, and getting them (US Government) to take back Columbia (give them info to help them). Building the City in 1893, all the tech and stuff could NOT be kept Secret ( The US Government WOULD want (insist) to know how it all worked BEFORE they spent one thin dime on such a expensive project, AND they WOULD have spies, etc ... ). SO the World down there would likely soon have sufficient means (certainly more Resources) to come after Columbia with their own Floatyshit(tm) things and weapons, which Fink & Co had not even dreamed of (( Back then there was an AREA 49 )). 
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THE STUPID THINGS SHOWN IN INFINITE BS
Voxophone Recordings from 1893 ??? : 
So Fink musta started pretty early with the technology stealing stuff ( now if they had been titled "Inspirational Mutterings of The Prophet", and had been rerecorded for public distribution from Edison Style cylinder recordings it might've made alot more sense. )
Or is it just more of the sloppy Timelining date markings of things without regard for the actual plot ??? ( Like they did in those severely flawed dates in BaS ... )
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Some of Comstock Audio Diaries From the Game DON'T Sound Like an Old Man :
He was supposed to VERY EARLY Be burned by his delving into 'Tear' dimension-land, resulting in Comstock paying the price for his strange deeds, and allowing that 'Prophet' Look (and backstory facilitation) ... Those Audio Diaries are all supposed to exist well after that event which aged him.
Seems like they were (GAMECOMPANY) recorded BEFORE the game storyline was finally pinned down after 2 rewrites, and the many role and theme shifts ( Redoing such Assets cost $$$$$. So they didn't bother correcting them ?? ) 
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==ROSALIND LUTECE Audio Diaries==
 Rosalind : "Whispers Through the Walls" :
Voxophone : "Whispers Through the Walls" : "The Lutece Field entangled my quantum atom with waves of light, allowing for safe measurement. Sound familiar, brother ? That's because you were measuring precisely the same atom from a neighboring world. We used the universe as a telegraph. Switching the field on or off became dots and dashes. Dreadfully slow -- but now, you and I could whisper through the wall ..."
Tap Tap Tap - It is Charlie Manson in his cell ... OOOPS Pulling him through will be a surprise ( OK, move on to Rosalind #1789 then ).
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Voxophone : "A Window" : Rosalind Lutece, Emporia, Columbia : "Brother, what Comstock failed to understand is that our contraption is a window not into prophecy, but probability. But his money means the Lutece Field could become the Lutece Tear -- a window between worlds. A window through which you and I might finally be together."
In "Whispers Through the Walls", it only talks about a telegraph-like communication made possible with 'The Lutece Field' - not a interdimensional/inter-time viewing machine.
So the "Tears" didn't happen til somewhat later ? If Comstock doesn't yet have his 'Tears' windows to Prophesize with, then how did he get 'the money' as a bigtime "prophet", for Rosalind to THEN make her Tear machine work ??? Chicken before the Egg. Both now cooked.
Also 'Comstock' can't yet LOOK old - just a wet behind the ears conman 16-19 years old, til those Tears make him look old.
Isn't this an inconsistency they didn't catch ( the mis-logic of it is simple enough ).
Booker DeWitt allegedly Born 1874 -- and 1893 is only 19 years later -- So whenever Comstock earlier ( than 1893, the year Columbia was built and the Floatyshit(tm) already existed ) met Rosalind, he was rather young to be a Religious Cult Leader with a big flock to get his hands on much 'money', and there was no aging yet either ( for that aspect of the flim-flam -- remember his alleged 'influence' to con the US Government was cuz he WAS a Big 'Prophet' 'church' leader ). 
( NOTE - If to REDO fix this improbability, IF Booker's age is pushed older for this, then he starts turning into a broken down old drunk by 1912 ... aged 38 + ? - So that's NOT a Canon solution. ). 
Even without that mistake, the "Wounded Knee Massacre" was December 29, 1890 ( Booker/Comstock is 16 ? ), so : 
* That 3 year interval (Comstock age 19 ?) doesn't give him much time to build up his 'church' ( minus his 'prophet' powers before he meets one or two Luteces and ( likewise not alot of "Conman College" time for him either )
* And then Comstock handover ALOT of money to Rosalind to build her "Contraption".
* And then all the time to research/develop/build 'the Contraption' ( to get those PROPHETIC 'tears' working ) 
* And then later do the same for the Floatyshit(tm) technology, required for Comstock's Columbia 'vision'
* And then to 'con' the Congress for sufficient money (for Columbia)
* And then to design/build it into a WORKING Columbia 1.0 ( with HAH HAH HAH !!! Government involvement/oversight/procurement, and all the crooked politician's relative's as contractors and selling any/all 'Tech' to their industrialist acquaintances ).
* Don't forget to talk ALL the Chicago politicians/local businessmen into allowing 'That Flying Deathtrap' to Steal THEIR Expositions 'Thunder'. ( Without a sufficiently large Bribe to even allow it to float over Lake Michigan nearby ).
* To *THEN* be Ready for the 1893 Exposition ( May 1 - October 30, 1893 ) -- Including training people to run the thing/staffing it, testing it to make sure it doesn't turn into a Titanic-type disaster when it catastrophically fails. 
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It is here where Levine & Co very obviously prove themselves to be ignorami, for making up a story where career politician ( US Senate/Congress ) could be swayed by a conman like this to spend ALOT of Taxpayer moneys, which ALREADY would be all earmarked to THEIR OWN political-agenda'd projects ( their Congressional Session was already over for the year, also ), AND in an economic climate heading into a Depression.
Just one more fantasy element to try to wedge their story into 'history' - too may half-understood ideas all glombed together like Columbia's bizarre architecture.
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Voxophone Analysis : "Unde Vigores ?" :
Rosalind : "That ghastly Fink fellow has been busy of late. He has sent his minions out to prowl the city, on the lookout for Tears wherever they might appear. They are armed with camera and Voxophone. One could only presume he is no longer content to steal patents from his own reality." (( From OTHER realities ??? Why should that matter ?? With Robert's help on HER technology, didnt SHE pretty much do the same thing ??? ))
Oh, and "Camera and a Voxphone" ... Riiiight... ( Some game Writers are imbeciles when it comes to the real world, aren't they ... )
Yes, if only you just had to SEE something to then BUILD it, and then MAKE it into a practical consumer product. What's that line -- "The Captain has asked me to make a mnemonic-memory-cell with stone knives and bearskins..." From Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock go back in Time... Fink is a caveman trying to make things from 50+ years in his world's future, when he hasn't possession of ALL the associated skills/knowledge/tools/materials ( and not really even getting a good/sufficient look at whatever the thing is/has to be ). He might not/probably-doesn't even possess what primitive corresponding knowledge exists in his own world about each thing he is supposed to have stolen.
"Gee-net-ick manip-u-lay-shens ? Sure - I'll just whittle one up for you, if you give me a week ..."
The thought, sweat and brilliance of hundreds of thousand of people it takes to create such things, and Fink pretty much just gets it done by waving his hands at it. At least Harry Potter is given a Magic Wand. Game writers create fictional things that don't actually have to work, and they generally avoid explaining them -- particularly when they really cannot work, and when what they write is an impossibility anyway. 
Garbage out of a hack writer's brain turns into fetid garbage flowing through the game.
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Better USE For This Dim Thing :
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Analysis : "On the Entropy of Genes" :
Rosalind Lutece : "Comstock seems to have been made sterile by simple exposure to our contraption. A theory: just as sexual reproduction can de-emphasize the traits of each parent, so goes the effect of multiple realities on our own. Your traits dissipate, until they become unrecognizable, or cease to exist."
Ooh, something about that 'merging' thing that is inconsistently applied across the game. (( House of Cards justifications ))
Comstock has been 'merged' with his DNA somehow 'averaged' ??? That sterility-effect interbreeding actually only works when the DNA is TOO DIFFERENT (different species ) rather than TOO THE SAME. Now if HE was the product of a human and a chimp breeding, THEN he would be sterile. 
BTW - Haven't Rosalind and Robert themselves gone thru a hundred or more realities ( their Talley Board of Bookers shows they have ) ?? So SHOULDN'T THEY two now be reduced into shapeless blobs ?? No ? Why Not ? (( Inconsistency Much ? ))
Amazing the BS the writers spewed at the Players. And WTF does this actually have to do with Comstock sterility and being changed to a 70+ year old ?? ( Genetic Disruption = Cancer, Massive Cancer == FATAL )
His reproductive organs being Irridated by strange Interdimensional Radiation would be more like it to make him Sterile, and the exposure degrading his body likewise.
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==LADY COMSTOCK Audio Diaries==
Vox-O-Phone Analysis "Beyond Redemption" :
Lady Comstock : "Tonight, the Prophet moved against his political enemies. He preaches mercy, but 40 souls lie tonight dead, in unmarked graves. If a man was ever unworthy of grace, it would be my husband. But when I was beyond redemption, he offered it anyway. How can I deny forgiveness to one who, with love, granted it to me?"
Perhaps this was AFTER the Secession when Comstock was wiping out all his rivals ( potential counter-revolutionaries ??? )
Or was this Comstock murdered the government officials running Columbia to seize the 'city' allowing the Secession ? You would have thought they would have got tired of him years previous.
"Unmarked graves" ? How quaint. Shoved into Fink's furnaces would be faster/easier/no-evidence. 'Dropping them Over the Side' likewise. How much dirt is hauled around within Columbia anyway ?
"I was beyond redemption" ? So she was originally some middle-shelf prostitute he ran into in some dinky town he was 'preaching' in ??? 
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==JEREMIAH FINK Audio Diaries==
Vox-O-Phone Analysis Fink - " Solution to Your Problems" :
"Analyse THIS Honky !!!" :
Fink (Town Center) : "I told you, Comstock -- you sell 'em paradise, and the customers expect cherubs for every chore! No menials in God's kingdom! Well, I've a man in Georgia who'll lease us as many Negro convicts as you can board! Why, you can say they're simple souls, in penance for rising above their station. Whatever eases your conscience, I suppose. "
'Convicts' seem to be quite the wrong kinda people for 'servants'. It is a Great Way to write a Self-fulfilling Failtopia prophesy. This is no plantation. It is not 'slaves' having lived cradle to grave under institutionalized slavery for generations. No mention was ever made of some (laughable) 'quantumz' method of pacifying 'convicts' into servile menials. Its a rather stupid idea - imbecilic actually.
(( Seriously these writers had NO understanding of the flawed mess they are creating in this games setting. ))
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==DAISY FITZROY Audio Diaries==
Fanning_a_Flame
""When you forced deep underground, well -- you see things from the bottom up. And down at the bottom of the city, I saw a fire burning. A fire's got heat aplenty, but it ain't got no mouth. Daisy...now, she got herself a mouth big enough for all the fires in Columbia.""
So the Fire Isn't what's really Within HER ?
Daisy JUST discovered this about Columbia to make this recording ? She is how old ? Or came to Columbia when ? - And she ignored what was going on all that time for it NOW to be some revelation ? She lived at 'The Big House', but people still whisper in the back-stairs. ( Captain Obvious Speaks - Huh ? Now She's an All Prescient God TOO but MISSED all that ??? Oh, she INSTANTLY turned into one, NOW ??? )
Or Is THIS more the talk of an Opportunist who sees a way of gaining power thru exploiting the plight of others. "Big Mouth" = 'Consuming Power' ??? The Tyrant-Wannabees driving Fire of Ambition ( We see what she does with it when she gets power in the game. )
'Wheels within wheels' ( missing/hidden/botched by the writers ? ). The downtrodden might look at her with suspicion and say : 'Spy !, Tool of the Founders! INSTIGATOR !!!!' ( Columbia's environment is perfect for a whole system of informers ). And Columbia is not THAT big - you can't really be very 'deep underground' in such a place. Individuals 'dare not' talk to those beside them without it likely being reported ( informers ). This prevents organized resistance - it is why Despots use such methods ( and 'disappearing' offenders is REAL easy in Columbia ).
YES, Columbia, more a Police State than most other places in History, would be chock full of informers ( and having the Fear/Distrust which happens because of it ).
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