Immersed in BioShock 2

One of the most interesting things about the game Bioshock was that it took everyone who played it into a world they’d never seen before. An underwater former utopia built half a century ago and left to rot in the Atlantic Ocean.  On February 9^th 2010, BioShock 2 arrives on U.S. shores and I’ve had the unique pleasure of playing the ‘Shock and chewing the fat with the game’s creative director at 2K Marin, Jordan Thomas. His perspective on the game’s development and what it takes to make the sequel as beloved as the original is submerged in BioShock 2’s ability to send you back to the once lost city of Rapture.

























Once I played BioShock 2, I was reminded how smooth the original game ran. As it stands BioShock 2 is a beautiful FPS with pacing most akin to Unreal Tournament, tiered character leveling elements usually reserved for role-playing-games and  audiovisual interiors that truly intensify the story. The original Bioshock was all about the immersive environments. Everything from the period music to the waterlogged advertisements for Plasmids and art deco interiors really made the experience stand out.  For that matter Bioshock was one of few heralded titles to start using environments in both the sound sense and visual sense to drive the agenda of the game.

Jordan Thomas’  strategy was making Rapture again and making it feel fresh. He readily informed me that not only had 2K Marin taken deliberate steps to create an older Rapture (mind you this is 1968, almost 10 years after the events of the first BioShock) but also to “…narrate a story of Rapture’s past through the never before seen neighborhoods of the city”. This would actually involve parts of Rapture built as far back as the 1930’s that are only now being explored as slums of a depression era. How this environmental styling all relates to the sensibility of Rapture and how it aims to drive the story is what Jordan believes is paramount to BioShock 2’s differential qualities.

Gone are the boastful Rand-isms of Dr. Andrew Ryan and in are the cult-ish wafts of Sophia Lamb’s architecture.  This presents a much more desperate Rapture as we’ve seen in the release photos of brutish junkies.  The city has always been a place where religion was outlawed but now you have Dr. Lamb perhaps countering that sentiment. According to Thomas countering the first experience, not aping it was the main goal of his designers at 2k Marin. You now play as a Big Daddy, one of the toughest characters in the original Bioshock. Jordan pointed out that tweaks had to be made in order to keep the game balanced especially starting the story as powerful as a Big Daddy. The new addition, to which I have to admit I do not find terribly creative, is the Big Sister. A decidedly more limber version of the Big Daddy made of former Little Sisters. Another counterpoint to the original Bioshock is that the sequel will be multiplayer. A feature that has some fans confused and rightfully so.  Bioshock never needed the distraction of a death match feature. Does BioShock 2? Jordan does mention that ability escalation similar to perks in the Modern Warfare series will separate the game from other multiplayer shooters.

If I could come away with any sense, it was that the creators of BioShock 2 have comfortably progressed the franchise through the additions of new features, characters and modes. I was really interested in how the dank deco levels of the first landmark game could be pushed.  So far it seems that through a deeper relationship with the narrative they have been broadened. However it remains to be seen if mood, multiplayer and Big Sisters can ‘shock’ us all the way the first one did.  It needs to create an experience that dives deeper into the world of BioShock while not diluting it.