Last week we took a look at one of Devin Townsend’s late 90s classics. A dreamy & righteous release, it’s oceanic vibes inspired me to cover the subject of today’s birthday & retrospective. A game franchise born in the sea, I knew that it had turned 10 last year, but I was busy with the final month of Power Metal Pandemonium, and didn’t have time to cover it. After last week’s review, it seemed only appropriate to give it’s due. So let’s put on our wetsuit, stick a footlong needle in our veins, and dive into the watery world of Bioshock. Let’s begin.
Bioshock (2007)(Trailer)
“Lead developer Ken Levine had created Irrational Games in 1997 out of former members from Looking Glass Studios. Their first game was System Shock 2, a sequel to Looking Glass's System Shock, and was met with critical success, though it did not prove a financial one. Levine had attempted to pitch a sequel to System Shock 2 to Electronic Arts, but the publisher rejected the idea based on the poor performance of the earlier game. Irrational would proceed to develop other games, including Freedom Force, Tribes: Vengeance, the cancelled title Deep Cover, and the completed The Lost which was never released due to legal complications, but at this point, Levine wanted to return to a game in the same style as System Shock 2, a more free-form game with strong narrative.
In 2002, the team had come up with a core gameplay mechanic idea based on three groups of forces; drones that would carry a desirable resource, protectors that would guard the drones, and harvesters that would attempt to take the resource from the drones; these would eventually bear out as the Little Sisters, Big Daddies, and splicers in the final game, but at the time of the concept, there was no set theme.[34] They began working on creating a setting for the game as to be able to pitch the idea to game publishers. A 2002 demonstration version was based on the Unreal Engine 2 for the first Xbox. his demonstration was primarily set aboard a space station overtaken with genetically-mutated monsters; the main character was Carlos Cuello, a "cult deprogrammer"—a person charged with rescuing someone from a cult, and mentally and psychologically readjusting that person to a normal life. Ken Levine cites an example of what a cult deprogrammer does: "[There are] people who hired people to [for example] deprogram their daughter who had been in a lesbian relationship. They kidnap her and reprogram her, and it was a really dark person, and that was the [kind of] character that you were."This story would have been more political in nature, with the character hired by a Senator. The team collectively agreed that this game was not what they had set out to make, and were having trouble finding a publisher. They considered ending development, but as news about their efforts to make a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 began to appear in gaming magazines and websites, the team opted to continue development, performing a full revamp the game.
By 2004, 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, offered to publish the game primarily based on the drone/protector/harvester concept, giving Irrational the freedom to develop the story and setting. By this point, the story and setting had changed significantly, taking place in an abandoned World War II-era Nazi laboratory that had been recently unearthed by 21st century scientists. Over the decades, the genetic experiments within the labs had gradually formed themselves into an ecosystem centered on the three groups. This version of game included many of the gameplay elements that would remain in the final BioShock, themselves influenced by concepts from System Shock 2. These elements included the use of plasmids and EVE, the need to use stealth or other options to deal with automated security systems, direction through the environment from a non-player character relayed over a radio, and story elements delivered through audio recordings and "ghosts" of deceased characters.
While the gameplay with the 2004 reveal was similar to what resulted in the released version of BioShock, both design and story underwent changes, consistent with what Levine says was then-Irrational Games' guiding principle of putting game design first. These areas were also issued due to some internal strife and lack of communication between the various teams within Irrational, part of the result of having to expand the team from six to sixty members for the scope of the project. The environment was considered bland, and there were difficulties by the team's artists to come up with a consistent vision to meet the level designer's goals. A critical junction was a short experiment performed by level designer Jean Paul LeBreton and artist Hoagy de la Plante, setting themselves aside to co-develop a level that would later become part of the "Tea Garden" area in the released game, which Levine would later use as a prime example of a "great BioShock space", emphasizing the need for departments to work together. Levine also found that the cyberpunk theme had been overplayed considering their initial reject from Electronic Arts for System Shock 3, leading towards the underwater setting of Rapture.
The thematic core of BioShock was born when Levine was walking at Rockefeller Center near the GE Building in New York City. He saw the uniqueness of the art deco styling of the building along with imagery around the building such as the statue of Atlas near it, and recognized that these were spaces that had not been experienced in the first-player shooter genre. The history of the Rockefeller Center also fed into the story concept; Levine noted how the Center had started construction prior to the Great Depression of the 1920s; when the primary financiers had pulled out, John D. Rockefeller backed the remaining construction to complete the project himself, as stated by Edge magazine "a great man building an architectural triumph against all the odds". The history of Rapture and the character of Andrew Ryan is loosely based on Rockefeller's story. He also considered that many of the characters of Rapture were all people who were oppressed once before in the lives and now free of that oppression, have turned around and become the oppressors, a fact he felt resonated throughout human history.
At this point in the development, the backdrop of Rapture had been fleshed out, but they had yet to come on how to represent the drones, protectors, and harvesters from their original game idea. The Big Daddy concept as the protector class was developed early in the process, but the team had yet to reach a satisfying design for the drones, having used several possible designs including bugs and dogs in wheelchairs. The team wanted to have the player care for the drones in some way and create pathos for these characters. The idea of using little girls came out of brainstorming, but was controversial and shocking within the team at first, recognizing that they could easily be killed and make the game more horrific in the style of Night Trap. However, as Levine worked on the story, he started to incorporate the ideas of dystopian and utopian thinkers from the twentieth century, including Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell, and considered their ideas "fascinating". He brought in the ideas of Objectivism that Rand primarily outlined in the book Atlas Shrugged, that man should be driven by selfishness and not altruism, and used this to inform the philosophy behind the city of Rapture and Andrew Ryan’s work, tied in with his previous observations on Rockefeller and his writings. This was extended to the use of the little girls as drones (now Little Sisters), particularly the question whether the player should try to save the girls or harvest the ADAM for their own benefit. 2K Games expressed concern about the initial mechanic of the Little Sisters, where the player would actively prey on the Little Sister, which would have alerted a Big Daddy and setting up the fight with the player. This approach did not sit well with Levine, and 2K Games asserted that they would not ship a game "where the player gets punished for doing the right thing". They altered this approach where the Little Sisters would be invulnerable until the player had dealt with their Big Daddy, though LeBreton considered this "a massive kludge" into the game's fiction. The idea of creating the Little Sisters and presenting the player with this choice became a critical part of the game's appeal to the larger gaming market though would still be met with criticism from some outlets. Levine desired only to have one ending to the game, something that would have left the fate of the characters "much more ambiguous", but publisher pressure directed them to craft multiple endings depending on the choice of harvesting Little Sisters. Levine also noted that "it was never my intention to do two endings for the game. It sort of came very late and it was something that was requested by somebody up the food chain from me."
Other elements came into the story design. Levine had an interest in "stem cell research and the moral issues that go around [it]". In regard to artistic influences, Levine cited the books Nineteen Eighty-Four and Logan's Run, representing societies that have "really interesting ideas screwed up by the fact that we're people". The idea of the mind control used on Jack was offered by LeBreton, inspired by films like The Manchurian Candidate, as a means to provide a better reason to limit the player's actions as opposed to the traditional use of locked doors to prevent them exploring areas they should not. The team had agreed that Jack's actions would be controlled by a key phrase but struggled with coming up with one that would not reveal Atlas' true nature. Levine happened upon "Would you kindly" after working on marketing materials for the game that asked the reader hypothetical questions such as "Would you kill people, even innocent people, to survive?", later working that phrase into the first script for the game.
Numerous tensions within the team and from publisher 2K Games continued during the development process. According to LeBreton, Levine was distrustful of some of the more egotistical newer hires and was often arguing with them to enforce his vision of BioShock. 2K Games was concerned with the growing budget for the title, and told Levine to market the title more as a first-person shooter rather than the first-person shooter/role player game hybrid they set out for. Near the targeted release date, Levine ordered the team into round-the-clock development, creating more strife in the team. Paul Hellquist, the game's lead designer, was often omitted from key design meetings, which he later recounted was due to his contrary nature to Levine, questioning several of his choices; he used his frustration to put into the design efforts for the Medical Pavilion level that he was in charge of at that time. Near the anticipated completion date, 2K decided to give Irrational another three months to polish up the game, extending the current crunch time the studio was already under. This left some hard-to-discover bugs and issues in the game undiscovered. One such case was an apparent Easter egg found in the remastered version in 2018, where under certain conditions, the player can end up looking at an object with the description "Paul Hellquist did not do his Job". Both Levine and Chris Kline, the game's lead programmer confirmed the message was a cheeky jab at Hellquist left as a debugging message; Kline and Hellquist were developing the systems to show descriptions of objects to players when looked at, and Hellquist offered to complete all the necessary descriptions in game; to jokingly help prod Hellquist along, Kline put "Paul Hellquist did not do his Job" as the default message within the executable code. While the code message was changed for the original release, the remastered version likely used a pre-final version of the BioShock code, according to Kline. Hellquist took the revelation in good humor and tweeted that other Easter eggs should have been added to the game to display, "If you are enjoying this, Paul Hellquist did his job."
A critical playtest of the game occurred in January 2007, where initial feedback from the players was mostly negative, including issues of the setting being too dark, having no idea where to go, and distrusting Atlas, who at the time was voiced in a southern drawl, described as a "lecherous Colonel Sanders". The team took this criticism to heart, revamping several elements during those extra months such as improving the lighting, implementing a quest marker, and using an Irish voice for Atlas to make him sound more trustworthy. During another late-stage playtest with the title "ninety-nine percent" complete according to Levine, the playtesters did not like the game at all as they felt no connection to the player-character Jack, and the person overseeing the tests told Levine that the game was likely to be a failure. At this point, BioShock did not have many cutscenes, as Levine was ideologically opposed to them. However, the following day, Levine and the lead group came up with a "cheap" way to correct this, by adding the initial cut scene within the plane and the subsequent plane crash, as this helped to set the time frame, place the player in the role of the character, and alluded to the "would you kindly" line later in the game. Levine likened this approach to the initial aircraft crash at the onset of the television show Lost to quickly establish character and setting.
The game was successfully released in August 2007 with a final budget of about $25 million. In a 2016 interview, Levine felt that the game could have used about six more months of development to improve the gun combat system and fix lagging issues that occurred during the final boss fight. Despite the critical success of the title, many of those on the team would leave Irrational to pursue other projects due to late development strife that occurred.”
Best Aspect? Personally, I loved the Art Deco visuals that Bioshock embraced. Apart from the Fallout franchise, this game & it’s accompanying sequel really go with the 1940/50s look & feel. Take all of this, and apply it to a city build underwater, and the end result is a world that’s simultaneously familiar yet dreamlike. This world is especially potent when you realize that everything that went to hell happens merely a year after you arrive: it’s grandeur ruined by paranoia, fear, mistrust, and a host of other negative thoughts. This ramps up in the 2nd game, but I’ll get to that when the time comes. The graphics definitely help this look & feel, and while the older version doesn’t quite stand the test of time, the remastered release from a few years back definitely does.
Next positive aspect is just how versatile the whole game is. There are definitely on-the-rail moments, but the approach as to how you accomplished your goals was incredibly sandboxey. You could go in guns blazing, taking out everything in sight. You could be sneaky, hiding in the shadows to conserve resources. You could mess with the systems of Rapture, taking control of the numerous cameras, vending machines, and robotics. It’s obvious that there are some things you can’t do, but what you’re able to do outpaces what you cannot.
Next up is the plasmids & weapons. On the implements on destruction, you have you standard pistol, shotgun, smg, etc. Once you get further in the game you gain access to stranger things like a chem-thrower and a crossbow, and it’s the weirder weapons I typically had the most fun with. As you traverse Rapture, you come across many one-use workbenches where you can upgrade your firearms. Increased magazines, higher fire rates, and a raise in potency are just some of what you can add to your tools. On top of that, all guns have 3 ammo types. 1 main, and 2 secondary that have various beneficial effects. Plasmids are pretty neat too: fueled by Eve (Think mana), they’re basically the equivalent of spells. You can stun enemies or electrocute them to death in water, grab objects out of thin air, unleash a swarm of insects, and many other cool things. Like your weapons, you can upgrade Plasmids overtime by acquiring stronger variants, which in turn replace the weaker versions you previously owned. You’re constantly experimenting with you Plasmids, swapping out powers as you need them.
Worst Aspect? The story is really the only weak point to Bioshock. As you traverse the ruins of Rapture, you’re constantly tempted to either rescue or harvest the Little Sisters. With each rescue or murder, you think it will lead to something big by the end. Nope. Even if you harvest more than one Little Sister (Let me repeat...... more than one!), you’re given the bleakest ending possible. If you don’t harvest any of them, you’re given an ending that I can only describe as diabetes inducing sappy. It’s a massive shame, as everything else apart from this isn’t half bad. There’s certainly potential for an awesome story, but the issue with the Little Sisters weighs down everything.
Bioshock. An absolute classic, and is a great example of an FPS game from the 2000s. You won’t regret buying & playing this release. Next game!
Bioshock 2 (2010)(Trailer)
“2K Boston and Irrational Games produced BioShock to critical and commercial acclaim. Several ex-BioShock developers moved to 2K Marin, a new Bay Area studio parent company Take-Two Interactive formed in late 2007. 2K Marin started on BioShock 2 with a core team of eight in November 2007, adding 78 additional personnel at peak development.
Jordan Thomas, BioShock 2's creative director, said that the first concern with a sequel to BioShock was "where do you go with this? How do you bring people back to an experience and terrify them and shock them in a way that they’re not expecting, but also fulfill the many expectations they’re projecting onto it?" Early on, Thomas decided that it couldn't be a BioShock game without the city of Rapture, and that there were many unseen locations and untold stories that could remained with the setting. The developers wanted to bring some of the mystery back to the location of Rapture, and maintain a balance of surprising old players while introducing the setting to newcomers. Thomas and environmental artist Hogarth De La Plante agreed that the setting of Rapture was fertile ground for new ideas, and that as they were both veterans of the original game, they were excited to add never-before-seen parts of the city and push the artistic style they had developed. "Any idea was out on the table at that point, and I think nobody has played BioShock more than the developers that made it, so I feel like in one respect we are a pretty good litmus test for whether it’s still an interesting place or not," La Plante recalled. "And if that doesn’t bore us and we’re the people that played it for thousands upon thousands of hours, then I think we have a pretty good perspective on how interesting that location really is."
Each game level was devised by a team comprised on an environmental artist and level designer working collaboratively, as opposed to a workflow where the level was designed and then handed over to art teams to be detailed. Level designer Steve Gaynor recalled that by involving the level designer, they could make sure that gameplay spaces still felt like functional, real spaces, making sure that the Rapture of BioShock 2 still felt like a living, breathing world.
Among the goals of BioShock 2's developers was to capitalize or improve aspects of the first game that were received less positively. One such element was the Pipe Mania-inspired hacking minigame. Thomas said that even players who enjoyed the minigames became "numb" to it after repetition; the replacement of the mini game with hacking that didn't allow you to pause the game added more urgency to the gameplay. Another aspect was the choice to harvest or save Little Sisters; by allowing players to adopt the Little Sisters before deciding their fate, Thomas hoped it would help players form a bond with the characters and think about their choice. Among the other goals the developers had for the sequel was adding more unspliced characters and give players a greater chance to make decisions that impacted the course of the game. "You make decisions about their fate as well, all of which play into the way the story ends," Thomas said. "There's definitely more granularity and dynamism in the narrative of BioShock 2." The game uses Unreal Engine 2.5.
The story received major changes over the course of development, with two of the most important relating to the player's character and the Big Sister. Initially there was only going to be one Big Sister who would continually hunt the player down throughout the course of the game and then retreat once she was defeated. This Big Sister was written as a Little Sister who, as she grew up on the surface, could not leave the memory of Rapture behind and eventually returned. The reason for the change, as explained by Zak McClendon, lead designer for 2K Marin, is "If you have a single character that the player knows they can't kill because they're so important to the story you're completely removing the triumph of overcoming that encounter with them." Jordan Thomas, the game's director, explains however, "The soul of the original Big Sister character still exists, but in the form of somebody you get to know over the course of the game." The other major change was that the player's character, Subject Delta, is no longer the first Big Daddy, but rather the fourth prototype. He is, however, the first to be successfully 'pair-bonded' to a single Little Sister.
Initially, media reports suggested that the subtitle, Sea Of Dreams, would accompany the second entry in the series. However, this subtitle was supposedly dropped, before 2K withdrew the statement, stating that the "Sea Of Dreams" subtitle would still be part of the full title. However, a later statement from 2K spokesman Charlie Sinhaseni clarified that the Sea Of Dreams title was for the trailer, and not for the game itself. The first appearance for BioShock 2 came in the form of a teaser trailer that was available in the PlayStation 3 version of the first game. The first major details on the gameplay and plot of the game were revealed in the April 2009 issue of Game Informer magazine, around the same time that the "viral" site "There's Something in the Sea" was revealed. This site documents a man named Mark Meltzer's investigation into the disappearances of girls from coastline areas around the Atlantic, along with a mysterious red light that accompanies each kidnapping. On April 9, 2009, on the Spike TV show GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley the first BioShock 2 gameplay video was shown featuring the Big Sister. This demo showed many features including the ability to walk under water.
Assisting 2K Marin were artists from 2K Australia, 2K China, Digital Extremes, and Arkane Studios. Character modeler Brendan George recalled that the modelers would have to think about how the concept art would be animated, not directly copying from the concept art to avoid animation issues and the uncanny valley. Character concept artist Colin Fix recalled that while the teams researched the time period for era-appropriate influences, costumes would need regular adjustment. "[The artists] had an earlier version of Stanley with a swanky Hawaiian shirt that was in the time period, but felt out of place in Rapture. It felt really modern even though it wasn't."
Fix described the splicers as originally perfect J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell figures, but "totally distorted." Starting with the recognizably human silhouettes of the splicers established in BioShock, the artists decided to push into more varied forms. Early concepts had parasite-covered splicers or air sacs, along with translucent, bioluminescent skin, but finding that these "human blobs" did not instill a sense of sadness in the player, the artists moved back to more conventional forms.
To create the multiplayer characters of pre-fall Rapture, Digital Extremes developed more than 26 character concepts, which were then narrowed down to a few archetypes that would represent a cross-section of the Rapture population.
The Big Sister was, according to animation supervisor Jeff Weir, the first thing Jordan Thomas talked about to the animators when they arrived at 2K Marin. The character challenged the team to convey her backstory and personality through the design. Fix started with descriptive words on a page, moving to thumbnails and silhouette concepts. Early inspiration for the character's design included racing dogs, and the idea of a character that carries itself in a restrained way until it explodes in action. "[We thought] of her as graceful and yet awkward at the same time, and that’s really the hard challenge that we had with her. Actually in terms of design, there were lots of fun things, like at one point she had a sort of 'Fallen Angel' feel to her, like broken wings," Weir recalled. Motion capture sessions were used for inspiration for the alternatingly awkward and fluid motion of the character, though none of it was used in the final product.[citation needed] In developing her visual design, the team tried to balance the design influence of the Big Daddies with a unique look. Soft design elements influenced by the story, like Little Sisters that would ride around in the Big Sister's cage and draw on her armor, were added to complement the harsh metal of the rest of the character.
Digital Extremes produced the multiplayer component of the game. In the multiplayer portion, players are put in a separate story where civil war has broken out in Rapture prior to the events of the first game. In the multiplayer mode, the player acts as a plasmid test subject for a company called Sinclair Solutions. As the player progresses through the multiplayer maps like Mercury Suites and Kashmir Restaurant they will either have the ability to hack turrets and vending machines or search for the Big Daddy suit.
Michael Kamper served as BioShock 2's Audio Lead; he joined 2K Marin to work on BioShock 2 after the closure of Electronic Arts Chicago. Only a single sound designer had worked on the previous BioShock's lauded sound, which Kamper called "intimidating"; "we were all basically coming into the project as fans of the first game." While Kamper collaborated with the leads for other facets of the game, he was given wide latitude to develop the sonic style of the game. Kamper, in turn, gave his team freedom to use whatever software they wanted to create and manipulate sounds, not wanting to limit their creativity.
"Certainly, the fact that the game was going to be set ten years after the first BioShock established the atmosphere of BioShock 2," he recalled. "I really wanted the ambience to sell the fact that Rapture was constantly falling apart around the player." In addition to lots of creaking and groaning sounds to accentuate the setting's disrepair, Kamper and the audio team added non-diegetic sounds that grow in frequency the closer the player gets to the end of the game to convey the mounting insanity of the Splicers. The Big Sister's sound effects were created by layering sounds from birds, hyenas, and Kamper's wife doing impressions of a dolphin. The audio team spent a great deal of time on immersing the player in their role of a Big Daddy through the audio—everything from the sound of the footsteps to the sounds for impacts and water drips on the player's armor was used to sell the player on who their character was. Audio programmer Guy Somberg created a background sound system that allowed the team to layer stereo sounds together depending on the player's location, combined with mono sound effects for certain areas. "This allowed us to quickly iterate on our ambiences and implement them into the levels with ease, and helped create the randomness I was looking for in the background effects," Kamper recalled. Multiplayer sounds were handled by Digital Extremes, who along with Kamper's team had to make sure their sounds cohered not only with each other's work, but with the sounds of the first game.
Garry Schyman reprised his role as BioShock's composer to create the score for BioShock 2. He wrote that "scoring a sequel to a major hit game is always a challenge," and the praise his BioShock score received made things even more difficult. He decided to retain some elements and motifs from the first game—use of the solo violin, and compositional techniques common in the mid-20th century setting—while creating something different. "BioShock 2 was easier in the sense that the style had been established and I didn't have to reinvent the wheel," Schyman noted. "So it was just delightful work creating that score. Which in some respects surpasses my original in my opinion." Among the elements the developers tried to improve on from the first game was adding more pieces of music for the combat sequences in each level.
Once the game's tone and style was established, Schyman worked off specific requests from the audio director for individual pieces of music. Kamper recalled that "[Schyman] really, really did a wonderful job" with molding the music to fit Thomas' and his intended mood and tones. The results, such as the music for the Pauper's Drop level, were different from anything else in the first game. To test how the music fit for each level, Kamper would send Schyman video footage of the game, which would then be appraised with the new score to see how well it meshed. Kamper split some of Schyman's tracks to use as leitmotivs; the opening track of Eleanor and Delta together was divided in later renditions, using the deeper cello for Delta and the violin for Eleanor. The score was recorded with a 60-piece ensemble of the Hollywood Studio Symphony at Capitol Studios.
In addition to the original music, BioShock 2 makes extensive use of licensed music from the time period. "Similar to the first game, we tried really hard to instill a sense of thematic cogency with our picks that the message that is coming through the licensed tracks," Thomas said, adding that blues and religious music were important to the sequel's themes, and that while the first game had used more commercial pop music, they wanted a broader range. Music from BioShock was used in the multiplayer portion of BioShock 2 to help connect it back to the time period of the first game.”
Best Aspect? If you were worried that the game would be too different from it’s predecessor, then put those worries to rest. Apart from some new additions, most of the core features of the original Bioshock are back. The splicers, big daddy & little sisters, plasmids, hacking, etc. Some might argue that this is a copout, as it’s basically just repeating the same game as before. For me, I’m kind of glad they used the same formula. For the most part it is indeed the same as Bioshock, but that game was really good, and a lot of what it uses translates well over to B2.
Next up is the fact that you’re now in the shoes of the iconic Big Daddy. Not the one that you fought in Bioshock, but you’re now a heavy hitter. Forgoing the human/splicer weapons of the 1st game, you’re given firearms befitting of a walking tank, including the iconic drill & rivet gun. Plasmids make a comeback, like the iconic Electrocute & Incinerate, but now you’ve got power like being able to create a black hole. Though the Big Daddy you play seems a little squishier than most, the armaments & powers you obtain make you bigger & stronger than just about everything else in Rapture.
Another plus is your interaction with the Little Sisters. Unlike the 1st Bioshock, the little girls you come across don’t look like dirty ragamuffins, but instead seem like normal yet eerie people. You take a Little Sister with you, searching for bodies that contain the precious Adam. It’s a fight to be sure, as splicers come out from so many nooks & crannies, so set things up ahead of time so you even it all out. As with the original game, you’ve got the option to harvest or rescue the girls, which in turn dictates the end of the story. In an interesting twist, after a certain amount of Little Sister interactions, a flexible beast called a Big Sister shows up to mess with you. It’s a hell of a fight, as you spend a lot of your resources taking her down. When you do, you gain a big reward in Adam & a host of other things.
Finally, the last positive is the look & feel of Bioshock 2. With the first game, it still felt like a vibrant city despite the destruction. In this game.....it’s disturbing. The whole city of Rapture now feels like an underwater tomb. Coming back after a decade (In-Game Time), the city feels like a place you shouldn’t belond. The idealistic dreams of this place are now long dead, and there’s really no need for anyone to go here. The new villain, Sophia Lamb, adds to this environment. Unlike Andrew Ryan, her background as a psychologist makes her much more cerebral, and she’s constantly playing mind games with you. Coupled with her hive mind “Everyone Is Part Of The Chain” ideology, and the end result is something akin to a cult leader with immense power.
Worst Aspect? Really Bioshock 2's biggest fault is most of the features are basically the same as that of Bioshock. The aspects of being a Big Daddy are cool, along with the Little Sister mechanics, new weapons & plasmids, feel fresh. Apart from those, there isn’t much of a difference from the original game. Apart from that, the multiplayer that was included really wasn’t necessary. While there were some cool ideas in theory, this component of the game wasn’t needed when you take into account that the original game didn’t have multiplay. It also doesn’t help the fact that I never touched the multiplay, and only relied on what I heard.
Bioshock 2. Definitely more of the same, but if it’s more of the same of a great game, then I don’t necessarily mind. Recommended if you want more of that classic Bioshock gameplay. Next game!
Bioshock Infinite (2013)(Trailer)
“BioShock Infinite was developed by Irrational Games and published by 2K Games, with Ken Levine working on the game as the creative director and lead writer. Irrational and Levine, who had previously developed the original BioShock, passed on the opportunity to work on the sequel BioShock 2 in favor of a new BioShock game with a different setting, with Take-Two Interactive allowing them the freedom to develop it. Work on Infinite began in February 2008, with the game's concept being formed six months after the original BioShock's release. Under the moniker "Project Icarus," Irrational worked in secrecy on Infinite for two-and-a-half years prior to its announcement on August 12, 2010. The game's development took about five years, with it finally announced as going gold on February 19, 2013. Irrational's work on the game required a team of about 200 people, while also receiving substantial assistance from developer company 2K Australia, which was formerly part of Irrational Games.
During the initial stages of development, Irrational originally considered several settings for the game, including reusing Rapture or setting the story in the Renaissance period, before finally deciding on the floating city of Columbia. The decision to set the game in Columbia originated after the developers and Levine read Erik Larson's 2003 non-fiction book The Devil in the White City, which prominently featured the World's Columbian Exposition set in Chicago during 1893. The time period at the turn of the 20th century and the historical events surrounding it, such as the World's Columbian Exposition, inspired the game's setting as a city in the sky, while the concept of American exceptionalism, which the World's Columbian Exposition was considered to have symbolized, later inspired the game's story and setup. The game also incorporated influences from more recent events at the time such as the Occupy movement in 2011, and several films such as David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Central to the game was the relationship between the player character Booker and the AI companion Elizabeth. Unlike BioShock's Jack and BioShock 2's Subject Delta, both of whom were silent protagonists, BioShock Infinite's protagonist Booker was given his own voice and identity. Elizabeth, a crucial element of the game, was designed as a character which could not only be a useful AI companion to the player but a real partner with a significant emotional bond as well. Elizabeth's development was inspired by the character Alyx Vance, who was described by Levine as a central element and an "emotional driver" of Half-Life 2. For the story, Levine took a novel approach by bringing the voice actors for Booker and Elizabeth, Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper, respectively, into the studio to develop their characters and help refine the story. Levine, however, did not provide the actors with full knowledge of the story in order to help them develop their characters' relationship in a much more natural manner.
BioShock Infinite runs on a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3, with additions and replacements on the core engine. Irrational had initially considered using the heavily modified Unreal Engine 2.5 used for the original BioShock, but it was deemed inadequate for their vision. According to Levine, Infinite was designed and developed from scratch, with none of its assets taken from previous BioShock games. In terms of gameplay, Irrational designed the vertical and open-air spaces of Columbia to provide more opportunities to include various types of combat compared to the close-ranged limits of Rapture within the original BioShock. As the game neared publication, numerous materials such as Vigors, Tear mechanics, weapons, locations, characters, and other enemies, were cut from it, with claims that enough material for five or six games had been scrapped during this process. Several members of the Irrational staff also departed near the end of the game's development, with their roles filled by replacements.
Levine stated that the performance issues faced by the Windows version of previous BioShock games had been addressed by Irrational in Infinite. He further added that the Windows version, enabled by Steamworks, would not use additional digital rights management software such as Games for Windows – Live or SecuRom. The retail Windows version would ship on three DVD discs to accommodate higher-resolution textures beyond the consoles versions, and would support video cards capable of running DirectX 11 in addition to DirectX 10, allowing for further graphical improvements to the game. Irrational also addressed another issue faced by the original BioShock, in that the PlayStation 3 version of Infinite would not be a port and was being developed in-house simultaneously with the Windows and Xbox 360 versions. In addition, the PlayStation 3 version would support stereoscopic 3D and the PlayStation Move motion controller, and would also include a free copy of the original BioShock in North America.
BioShock Infinite was released worldwide for the Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms on March 26, 2013. Aspyr later published and ported Infinite to the OS X platform which was released on August 29, 2013. Two major pieces of downloadable content have since been released by Irrational for the game. The first piece is Clash in the Clouds, a non-story arena-based combat mode where the player is faced with increasingly difficult waves of enemies on various maps based on in-game settings. It was released on July 30, 2013. The second piece is Burial at Sea, a story-based expansion set in Rapture that links Infinite's story to that of the original BioShock game. It consists of two episodes, with the first one released on November 12, 2013, and the second one on March 25, 2014.BioShock Infinite: The Complete Edition, bundling BioShock Infinite with Clash in the Clouds and Burial at Sea, was released on November 4, 2014.
The original score for BioShock Infinite was composed by Garry Schyman, who had previously composed both the scores for BioShock and BioShock 2. Ken Levine stated that Infinite's score was different compared to that of the previous games in the series, in that it was "sparer" in "instrumentation and the style." He felt that the game had a "much more of an American feel to it," and added that team wanted "a bit more of a frontier feel to it, slightly." Levine went on to comment that the score was partly inspired by Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood, which served as a "good" starting point, and Paul Buckmaster's score for 12 Monkeys.
From the very beginning during development, Schyman opted for a completely fresh approach to the score for Infinite due to its differences with previous BioShock games. He said that compared to the previous games, Infinite's world and time period were "completely different and unique in nearly every respect," and that it was "much more fleshed out in terms of the characters" with story being driven by the two main protagonists. Schyman noted that he worked on the score over an extended period of time, and due to the game's long and evolving development cycle, it took longer to find the right approach to the score. After much experimentation, Schyman found that using a simpler musical score was best for the game as he felt that it was consistent with the simpler time of 1912. However, Schyman stated that he did not limit himself to the music of the period, and added that while the game's setting of 1912 was very influential, it was not determinative. He said, "I did not wish to imitate the popular music of 1912 which is not particularly emotional to our ears in 2013." Originally working with a more orchestral approach, Schyman later used very intimate small string ensembles with anywhere from three to ten players to compose the game's relatively simpler score. Schyman also called Elizabeth a critical element to the music, explaining that "a lot of the music relates to her and some of the emotional things that she's going through." He went on to describe Infinite's music as "more of an emotional score" as it was about the relationship between the two key characters in the game, Booker and Elizabeth.
Levine stated that choosing the licensed music for Infinite was much more challenging compared to the original BioShock. He commented that with the original BioShock, set in 1959 in the mid 20th century, it was easy to acquire musical pieces representative of the era, with him saying that the team "had this huge slate of great music to choose from." Levine stated that with Infinite, however, it was set in 1912 in the early 20th century, which had music he described to be "awful" and "not very listenable" to the "modern ear." Consequently, the development team had to "dig really deep" and research extensively for more satisfactory music in Infinite's time period. Levine noted that he was not strict with selecting the music and songs that was accurate to the game's time period, as he felt that the most important thing with regards to the music was "that you get people to feel things." He added that the game's fictional nature justified him and the team "play[ing] a little fast and loose" and "[doing] things a little differently" with the music. Levine also stated that Infinite's music would play a "strange role" in the game; he explained that the music would "tie into the macro story, to some degree," and that the team had "a lot of little stories" to tell about it.
BioShock Infinite's soundtrack, original music, and songs received numerous accolades. The game won for Best Song in a Game ("Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" performed by Courtnee Draper & Troy Baker) and was nominated for Best Soundtrack at the VGX 2013. It later won for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition at the 17th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, and won for Best Music in a Game at the 3rd Annual New York Videogame Critics Circle Awards. The game also won for Song Collection at the 2013 National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards, and won for Original Music at the 10th British Academy Video Games Awards. The game won three awards at the 12th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards for Music of the Year, Best Original Instrumental ("Lighter Than Air"), and Best use of Licensed Music.”
Best Aspect? Graphics in Infinite are a big plus. Though there seem to be some small connections to B2's engine, for the most part everything looks great! Better textures, lighting, and particle effects are just some of the things that put it above the previous 2 games. Heck, even the sound seems better in Infinite, what with it’s soundtrack and various effects. When you fired one of the bigger weapon, you felt it, and the noise it made felt real as well.
Next positive is the look & atmosphere of Bioshock Infinite. Though the Art Deco imagery of the 1st two games is always a welcome sight, the early 1910's art design creates an even more archaic world. In addition to that, the floating world of Columbia is a strangely more grand place to be. You aren’t chained to being underneath the sea, as you’re now floating in the clouds of Heaven (Literarily & Figuratively), able to travel anywhere in the world. On top of all this, Columbia isn’t devastated upon your arrival like Rapture was. If anything, the flying city is intact, clean, and strangely peaceful. In a way Infinite is stronger with how things go down, as you actively see Columbia fall down all around you, and the populace doesn’t know what to do.
Worst Aspect? Let’s be really honest here: Bioshock Infinite is not a Bioshock game. Sure, there’s upgrades to your weapons & abilities, and the setting only exists because of weirdness that works in that world, but this is so hallow when it comes to the first 2 games. There’s far fewer opportunities to explore & experiment with combat, characters & storytelling aren’t quite as in depth, and you’ll settle down with what powers & weapons you can use rather than constantly experiment. You can only have 2 weapons & powers, which is incredibly disappointing when you take into consideration how much you could hold in the 1st two games. You can definitely upgrade all of your weapons like Bioshock & Bioshock 2, but the upgrades are minor in comparison to those 2 games. On top of that, when you drop guns on the off chance, future models still have the exact same upgrades. Hell, it isn’t even explained as to how Vigors & Salts (Plasmids & Eve) are around in the first place! This feels more like an FPS game that just happens to have Bioshock elements. Nothing more & nothing less.
Bioshock Infinite. A transparent attempt at catering to a new crowd, and what little that was cool or original is drowned out by the watered down nature of the whole thing. Recommended to hardcore Bioshock fans only. Casual fans would to well to stay away.
So this was my belated 10-year anniversary look at the iconic Bioshock. Still spoken about today, it’s a testament to it’s legacy that it’s still spoken of today. Got a little more going on during Catchup Month 2.0., so stay tuned!
No comments:
Post a Comment