Earlier this week, I played around four hours of BioShock: Infinite, which is due for release next March. While this was at a publisher-held event (disclaimer – I ate some free salt and vinegar flavoured Hula Hoops and a small bowl of Moroccan tagine. Alas, I hate aubergine) and I was part of a gaggle of journalists, I was not guided or observed during my playthrough, so I approached it at my own leisure and pack-rat pace. >

It has given me much to think upon, a few examples of which I shall share with you below. I will avoid all spoilers as regards to the events of the plot, but please be advised that I do talk in detail about the setting, its population and its backstory as presented by these initial hours of the game. (more…)

Just a quick one as a) I don’t have much information for you as yet and b) I managed to hit my head on my own desk really hard> earlier and need a lie down, but I thought perhaps some of you would be interested to hear news on The Fullbright Company, aka what the lead designer of the excellent Minerva’s Den add-on for BioShock 2 did next.

After working on assorted BioShocks at 2K Marin and then Irrational, Steve ‘Fullbright’ Gaynor got back together with fellow ex-Marin types and Minerva collaborators Johnnemann Nordhagen and Karla Zimonja, and they’ve set up this new indie studio based out of Portland, Oregon. “We missed working on a small team, on a small project, focused on telling a personal story in a player-driven way. We wanted to do that again. It was fun last time.” (more…)

Yesterday, we brought you Ken Levine’s explanation of BioShock: Infinite’s 1999 mode. The response was, perhaps inevitably, divided. Here’s the second part of my chat with him, in which he anticipates that, as well as addressing the fact he can only offer a biased opinion of his game, the problem with out of context headlines, tennis in BioShock, why SWAT 4 would have been a very different game under his stewardship and, yes, why “if you’re a reader on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, you are sophisticated enough to not listen to what Ken Levine says.” > (more…)

Late last week, Irrational announced 1999 mode for BioShock: Infinite – an attempt to recapture the sense of binding decisions, permanent consequences and hard-as-nails challenge that we perhaps associate with a lost era of gaming. In this first of a two-part interview, I nattered to avuncular Irrational bossman Ken Levine about why they came up with 1999 Mode, what it entails, why it’s a very different prospect to simply a ‘hard’ difficulty setting, why he doesn’t want non-hardcore gamers playing that mode, and whether or not it’s a reaction to disappointment about BioShock from System Shock fans.> (more…)

While waiting impatiently for something else to download over the weekend, I booted up BioShock 1 for the first time in years, curious to see how it held up a half-decade on. I’d forgotten how remarkable and how magnetic its first few minutes are: whatever else you want to accuse the game of, the work it does in so quickly and so assuredly building a world and a mountain of intrigue around it is something we see all too little of. The vast majority of mainstream games open with enough dry exposition to choke a rhino, but this grabs your total attention with a bare minimum of talk, a steady flow of unpredictable spectacle and a spinetingling cocktail of awe and anxiety. Irrational are, I think, right to leave Rapture behind – but, for no particular reason other than ‘why not?’, let’s remember just why they built it in the first place. (more…)

Curse our limited-length titles! For this post should really be called something like ‘Irrational co-founder and now Blue Manchu boss Jon Chey talks more about his splendid-sounding new PC boardgame/ CCG/ MMO mash-up Card Hunter, how to make free-to-play non-horrible, what he thinks the future might be for immersive sims in the vein of System Shock and his thoughts on his former studio’s controversial XCOM remake’. Doesn’t bloomin’ fit though, does it? Oh well. You’ll find all that stuff out for yourself simply by reading on: tons of interesting comments in here, and I’m particularly excited by the thought towards the end that a coming wave of mid-budget simulational shooters might be on the cards, and far more likely to take big creative risks than their glossier triple-A peers… (Oh, and if you missed the more Card Hunter-centric first part of this interview, looky here). >

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Timing-wise, the long-in-development Bioshock prequel novel couldn’t have landed at a worse time. Remember Rapture? That’s right. It’s the place that was so awesome, before we were blown away by Columbia a few weeks ago. In the mood to return? There’s the rub…

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Those of us who didn’t spend the best part of a week legging it around a giant convention centre earlier this month could only swoon at the resulting tall tales of BioShock: Infinite’s newly-announced reality-rift feature, known as Tears. Now we get our own crack in space-time to peer through, as Ken Levine talks about (and demonstrates) companion character Elizabeth’s ability to introduce elements from other realities into the player’s game-world.

The upcoming third BioShock game intends to fix an oft-made criticism of the Rapture-set original games, according to Timothy Gerritsen, Director of Development at Irrational Games.

The Executive Producer on Bioshock Infinite admitted to RPS in an interview published today that, in the first Bioshock, “we failed in giving you a sense of that city underwater.”
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