Songbird Fun

* See also Pigeon_in_a_Gimp_Suit
* See also Giant_Parakeet_in_a_Gimp_Suit
* See also Finks_experiments
* See also Tower_and_Siphon ( which Songbird Trashed )
* See also INFINITE-BS_REDO
== That Giant Parakeet in a Gimp Suit ==
An attempt at an Iconic character for Infinite BS ( and future Plushie Toy )
The thing kept getting bigger. Gianourmity and canned animation unlike our Big Daddies.
With equations yet ...
Obvious and failing Attempt at a Big Daddy Iconic game thing - When it all pretty much got done in cutscenes.
NOTE - That Songbird originally was supposed to be Man-Sized. Then the hugification took place.
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Buh Bye... :
Elizabeth I Guess Did Not Foresee What Happens To Songbird ( her ONLY childhood friend ) On Arrival in Rapture ...
What does happen when you suddenly appear in the water outside a window in Rapture and are instantly subjected to the pressure of 600 feet of ocean water ???
* Lungs instantly smashed flat, any void in the suit gets pressed in by the outside skin 
* Water invades the whole suit - pours in even hole no matter how small ( any Electrical stuff shorts and disrupts whatever-the-hell magic BS powered the thing stops working ).
* Of course all the breathable air is now gone ( doesn't much matter after the traumatic pressure forces do what they do ).
* The cold being slightly above freezing means that the corpse will rot slowly ( ocean bacteria will love it ).
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Might They Have Intended For Songbird To Walk Around Columbia WITH Elizabeth (Like a Big Daddy) ? :
YOU KNOW THEY THOUGHT ABOUT IT ....
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WHY A GIMP SUIT ???:
At what point did having a flying monster patrolling the city begin to dawn on many of Columbia's citizens that they weren't really in anything American any more ??? And the thing also being more something which looked to belong in Hell rather than Eden or Heaven ???? Further, realizing that Columbia then probably was NOT someplace they really wanted to be. The Bible repeatedly mentions False ProphetsIts Funny how they missed this one for the game - But then Levine says he doesn't actually know that much about religion which IS VERY OBVIOUS in the way that Infinite BS was written. See Faux_Religion , and more and more this might have been their realization about Comstock. That should have been the real story instead of all the Faux-Science quantum mumbo-jumbo and 'lipservice' "evil" social issues. 
Having this Failtopia be populated with creepy Stepford Wive's-like citizens again would have been better than somehow trying to imply the game's setting as being 'typical' Americanism Levine's Faux-America or implying it be anything Christian. But then, as so many people point out when you mention this : That "Its Only a Game". My reply to that is "Yes, ONLY, and pretty mediocre Fantasy at that - in both story and gameplay." --- AND that "It is not the 'topia' that failed, but this cockamamie circle-botch pretending to be 'historic'Faux_History."
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Yes, What Better More Appropriate Thing For a Flying City Than a Giant Pigeon ? :
(( Actually from Columbia's size, it barely registers as a town. SO Then, a village full of oxygen-starved idiots ? ))
Clever would have been : The common stains and discolorations on the many Statues, and THEN memos in some of the offices Booker and Elizabeth go through - about the birdshit issue and various complaints.
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Song Bird Mostly a CutScene Prop :
Unfortunately the Player didn't get the more visceral opportunity of actually having to Combat the Songbird yourself. Cutscenes just aren't the same ( watching the Eiffel Towel topple over in Call of Duty was 'memorable', but you really had little to do with it ).
I suppose, it would have been ridiculous trying to fight something as big as King Kong ( which they grew Songbird into that size as to make him more 'Menacing' in the 'canned' sequences ), and would have been creepily bad to fight only a gimp-suited giant pigeon which was only as big as a Big Daddy ( as well as the problem for the game makers actually believably choreographing all the required free flowing combat motions for that character and its damage ). Imagine what a Bullet Sponge such a less-grand Prop would have needed to be if you had to fight it more than once. Of course they had to have the tearful 'farewell' cutscene at the end of the game where Elizabeth simply kills Songbird - drowning him outside in the ocean in Rapture ( HMMMM, THAT is what Elizabeth does to 'lifelong friends' ... ).
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Whatifsongbird.jpg|Story Woulda Been A Bit Different 
Songbirdorbandcage.jpg
SONGWHO.jpg|Another chalkboard (and when it was more human sized)
RodanColumbia.jpg|This Looks Real Familiar
CrushedFlatAsAPancake.jpg
Songboid.jpg|If Everyone was From Brooklyn then it would be SONG BOID ...
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Songbird Humongosity - SORRY, It is No Replacement for Good Detail, or Creative Cleverness :
An 800 foot tall Songbird 800 foot tall Songbird - The Boid that Ate Toledo ??? would have been 'awesome' to the Fanbois, but spells *FAILZ* to the Players who have higher expectations for a 'BioShock' game. ( If the Players wanted Cutscenes, then they would go watch a movie. )
Songbird's size and power seems to have grown as it made the transition from 'Boss Fight' ( and Big Daddy replacement ) to canned 'Cutscene Nemesis'. Far easier to create Cutscenes than to program a Reactive AI for a real challenging opponent ( Flying adds '3D' difficulties, which Levine & Co simply could not master ?? ). (( "Joust" was done in the 80s and THAT was lots of fun. Will have to see what we can do for the MMORPG ))
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Songbird :
Another regurgitation ( Barfbird ) - By writers trying to come up with ( as in largely copying ) a game Icon equivalent to the Big Daddy ( the 'Mothman' concept was even moreso a BD clone ). Songbird appears all kludged together, when it could have been far prettier ( like half of what went into making one of the Vending Machines ) with a fitting Columbia themey style -- It was a 'one-of' primary plot Prop which should have been made to impress ( for it to serve as the City's enforcer/protector/whatever ).
Wouldn't an 'Angel' have been more appropriate/logical, instead of something that looked like it came from the 'infernal regions' ( or is that too logical ? )
With far less reason justifying it ( our BD were man-sized, not giant Whatever-the-Heck Songbird was, which can fly in Columbia ). AND then, after all the Hype, it is pretty much reduced to being a Canned Prop -- with very little free/general interaction with Player.
Perhaps all that mediocre scripting effort on Elizabeth was so hard that doing similar/greater for Songbird just cost too much ... alot harder than they assumed. Free '3D' movement on a level map would have required much more complex terrain data and behavior logic ( '2D' and the "Platformer" type terrain which Booker/Player used in Infinite BS is far simpler ).
Inhuman/over-scaled sized ... so the game maker's logic being that bigger must be more impressive/better?? ( couldn't they have made it even bigger then ?? Make it as tall as Comstock House ? Comstock's monstrous Robotic Golem ... ) IT must half destroy buildings to get into much of the City interior places ( unless ? they had many big 'bird-flaps' for its entry ).
Technology ? More Quantumz floatyshit ? Wings ? When it could just have had a jetpack ( or that's intended for show ? - Batman idea that went stupid ?? )
That Breathing Tube ? WTF is THAT all about ?? - It regenerates from inhaling its own farts ? This isn't underwater here. Also that is a perfect design for something to be Failure ProneEnvironmental suit exposed 'tubes' - Actually a typical cliche thing for Movie and TV shows to have a handy vulnerability for the story. - Flying along and it snags on something ... Amazing it hasn't Asphyxiated long previously ( or snapped its own neck catching on all the city's ornate decorations ).
Is this really Barney the Purple Dinosaur from an alternate dimension ??? Giant Pigeon ?
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Interactive Animation Scripting for this prop so to turn it into a general NPC would have been a massive effort. Songbird would have to interact with actions perhaps FAR MORE extensive than what Elizabeth did - like Combat with NPCs, and IF it had Flying ability still ... I saw MANY odd behaviors and glitches in Elizabeth's scripting, and It would have been far worse for attempting to make Songbird interactive.. It also could NOT have been as Gianourmous to be able to fit some of the tight terrain (and certainly the doorways). (( The MMORPG's REDO perhaps could accomplish something like this.... ))
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Songbird's Purpose :
Aside from protecting Elizabeth, it was also used to keep order in the city through 'death from above'.
Supposedly with orders issued on a 'Zamfir Pan Pipes' ... perhaps maybe if it just enforced absolute/simple curfew laws ... ( "Go out and kill anyone in the open..." )
It's mentioned that the Vox were the ones who developed the first Sky-hooks to move between areas and avoid curfews, before the Police got there. So it was probably up to the Songbird to swoop out of the sky and knock them off the city.
Perhaps 'kill anything on the skylines' ( besides boxcars - so 'anything living' ) might be simple enough order.
How exactly you train/condition for that ... We don't even know what is inside the songbird ...
A Big Daddy had a 'human' inside and was trained for maintenance tasks as well as the Little Sister Escort missions. ADAM facilitating retraining and conditioning : We have to add that to the list of uses ( There were Tonics to make you 'smarter' advertised ... ) Use of a BD might be cruder ( and more extensive ) than for your typical consumer.
Infinite was just far vaguer about such things.
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IDEA : You might also have "Public Executions" Roman-style with Songbird tearing ordinary criminals apart in an Arena. ( Chewing them up and swallowing them would be a bonus ).
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That's the force of about 20 tons of water pressing on EVERY square foot of Songbirds surface there ... The effects of water pressure is mere Physics.   Squooosh -  in some tiny fraction of a second.
But why should we expect the writers who did all that fantasy in Infinite BS to follow anything remotely realistic ?
Another Thought : Elizabeth discards her childhood 'Companion' and 'Friend' SO Very Easily. 
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Evidence that Songbird was being developed well over a decade before the time of the Game ( ~4 year old Eleanor ?). How that is achieved - just with 'Quantumz' OR also with Acquired-ADAM ( which would imply that the Fink-Suchong Events took place quite early as well ).
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You have these things which supposedly Controlled Songbird.
Shit, this wouldn't be as effective as Pheromone Control, and Splicers generally can handle more specific verbal orders for the desired action.
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We never did see a 'Feeder' for Songbird: 
What might it have even eaten ?
Oh well, Good World Building and Logic were not a great priority in Infinite BS.
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Looks more like a Thing Out Of Hell ( Wouldn't it have been better as a Giant White Angel ??? )) 
And the Whack-a-Doodle Thing kept getting Bigger and Bigger ...THE BIG BOID : Not the only thing in the game that the gamemakers inflated to absurd size ... 
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Flutes Mass Deployed By Vox - Has the Songbird thing going in circles - Nullified
All that noise from the Massive Fink Factories drowning out any 'magic song activation' ?
Cute and worthy of some weak Anime BS, but not really "Steam Punk-like" ( Un-BioShock Worthy ).
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Imagine 'Little' Elizabeth as a child playing with Songbird, and OOPS he steps on her - SQUOOOOSHInfinite Universes - We can have Flashbacks/FlashSideways created in The MMORPG representing all the amusing possibilities. ?
Unfortunately Quantity(Size) Rather Than Quality was what we got in the Infinite BS game.
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Actually THAT would have been an interesting component for the Story to try to explain Songbird's role/purpose in Columbia : Seeking Out random Tears to close/eliminate them - because they were a potential threat to anything near them. (ADD THIS TO THE REDO)
No doubt, the Luteces would have been part of developing and making him. (( Why else would they have the Tune Control Card for him ??? ))
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