How do you convey the fact that a scene is set in Paris? Easy: You put an Eiffel Tower in the background. But what if the players don't notice it? What if it's not enough? That's where you have to get creative. Add a chap on a bicycle, wearing a striped shirt, perhaps. Maybe sprinkle in some croissants falling from the sky, which is what rain looks like in France.
Or, if you're a developer working on the Bioshock Infinite "Burial At Sea" DLC, just add a little lad triumphantly holding a baguette high in the air, as he dances around a pole covered in Art Nouveau posters while Edith Piaf sings La Vie En Rose in the background. Subtlety be damned!
Sometimes art departments are stretched pretty thin, especially when the game is already out and many of its staff have presumably been shunted onto other projects, so it's not surprising that corners have to be cut — and this one is, admittedly, a creative workaround that has brought joy to many.
Ex-Irrational developer Gwen Frey claims responsibility for Baguette Boy, in response to this original tweet:
"I placed all the background characters in Bioshock Infinite & the DLCs. It was a large part of my job. Here's why there is a bread boy:
I was populating the Paris scene with "chumps" (skeletal meshes of humans with no AI). I'd play a looping animation on a person, script some head-tracking or whatever, & request VO lines from the writers to flesh them out.
For [performance] reasons we couldn't afford to have proper AI pathfinding around, so most of the background characters were "chumps". And we didn't have a ton of resources for DLC so I was mostly reusing animations from the base game."
So, there you have it: Baguette Boy was born out of a need for simple background characters that wouldn't put too much strain on the consoles or the developers.
In turn, Baguette Boy and all of his "chump" friends actually inspired the name of Frey's new studio, "Chump Squad", as she details in a thread to fellow developer and Uncharted co-writer, Josh Scherr:
Suffice it to say that real-world Paris is not actually populated with chumps, although baguettes do occasionally make people happy enough to do a little dance.
Do you remember Baguette Boy? Tell us your fond bread-related memories in the comments.
[source twitter.com]
Comments 21
This is a bit of weird story for Nintendo life. I can't remember if Bioshock made it on a Nintendo console. I do love the Baguette boy though.
@Saturn589 Stuff from several generations back get ported to Switch all the time. Eventually every game ever will be relevant to this site.
@Saturn589 its on switch.
I loved that scene. I just hanged out for 20 mins and listened to the music. A great moment in a bad game!
@Saturn589 I linked to the page for Bioshock Infinite on Switch in the article
@Eddyson Not a fan of that game either. Incredible how a game that’s ‘political’ can have literally nothing to say 😂
That DLC, the ending especially... wrecked me. It genuinely stayed with me for quite a while.
@nessisonett How is Bioshock Infinite political? I feel like it's much more obviously a commentary and criticism of the founding of the Mormon church and the building of "Zion" aka Salt Lake City.
@dluxxx Uhhhh, the entire plot? The Vox Populi are literally anarchical communists trying to overthrow the ruling class who are a fake theocracy that acts more like a dictatorship. The idealism of Columbia is basically just a riff on American exceptionalism, the irony being that they’re copying the Belle Époque period of Paris rather than anything particularly American in origin. The problem is that Levine fails to really expand on his ideas and goes down the ‘oh well, both sides are bad’ route that too many writers fall into.
@dluxxx @nessisonett this is an article about a boy and his bread. Let's please not make it into some sort of political debate.
@Eel Don’t mention Bioshock Infinite then. It’s not a political debate in the slightest, the person asked me why the game has political themes. I responded with the themes which the game contains. If you don’t want any discourse remotely even close to politics then don’t run a video game news site. Any form of media inherently will have political themes involved, some more than others. Just so happens that this game contains an awful lot, entirely on purpose.
@nessisonett if you extracted all of this from a simple action game, i think that the game has literally a lot to say. But i agree that the 'both sides are bad' plot is a little disappointing
@nessisonett I don’t run a video game news site, and that was a forewarning.
However, I’d like to believe you are capable of looking at random video game trivia, without inserting political discussions into the conversation.
Great game imo. Infinite is still dazzling to play through today.
@Saturn589 Who wouldn't know the BioShock Collection is on Switch? Lol .. I'm an old school BioShock fan so BioShock could burp and I'd know about it, lol
@Eddyson bad game? Get bent. Lol. Infinite was an overall great interactive experience.
Removed - discussing moderation
@nessisonett I don't mind 'politics' in games. I hate, or rather, I despise needing to buy DLC for the true ending of a game.
Give me all the political agenda you want, just give me the ending of your game too.
@LUIGITORNADO I enjoyed the gameplay too. But hiding the true ending behind a DLC paywall, leaves a very sour and bitter aftertaste. I could have been an even better game and it still would be a bad experience for me if you don't put the ending in your game.
But you're right, I'm not entitled to an opinion, I'll now try to get bent! bending
wow apparently my comment was removed for "discussing moderation" which is not what I was doing.
I was merely stating the cries of "no politics this is a site about games" from members are ridiculous for games that are all about politics. Moderation wasn't even mentioned.
Games are more than just entertainment if they want to be.
Note that DLCs are included with the Switch release. And it's often discounted to ~7€.
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