Near the beginning of the E3 demo of Irrational Games' Bioshock Infinite, there's a moment when... well, it's the sort of thing that when you talk to other people who have seen it you say, "You know... that part?" And they nod knowingly and say, "Oh yeah. That part. That was awesome."

It starts when Booker DeWitt's sidekick-slash-magical-teammate-slash-damsel-in-distress Elizabeth goes to heal an injured horse by opening up a hole to a parallel reality. While doing so, she accidentally rips a tear into an entirely different world... from the future. A rainy urban scene intrudes upon the colorful Columbian roadway, and a giant neon movie marquee reads: "Revenge of the Jedi." Without warning, a massive, clanging firetruck blasts towards our protagonists, freaking them the hell out as Elizabeth slams the gate shut.

Talking to Gamasutra, Infinite's Creative Director Ken Levine revealed that the assets for that sequence came from an entirely different, cancelled game.

"It was supposed to be to this primeval forest kind of thing, and it just wasn't striking or different enough... but we had assets from a game we abandoned," Levine says.

The high-impact neon anachronism of the world inside Elizabeth's tear is born of assets from a game Irrational killed, says the team. Reviving it "was such a better idea than the idea we were building all these assets for. We made a bunch of changes to really sell it, but we had all those assets just sitting around from a game we never shipped," says Levine.

So, Irrational had been working on a game that featured an urban vibe and a lot of neon. What could it have been? And will we see more of it in Bioshock Infinite?

Interview: BioShock Infinite's Strong Moments, Best Accidents [Gamasutra]

I expected the official PlayStation Blog to quiz BioShock mastermind Ken Levine on PlayStation topics like 3D and the Move. I expected him to drop intriguing comments like one about how sniper rifles will "become very meaningful" in the expanse of BioShock Infinite.

I didn't expect the PlayStation blog to ask if next year's BioShock will have a New Game Plus mode.

They did, and he answered, cryptically:

PlayStation Blog: Replayability is a hot topic for single-player-focused games. Have you been thinking about ways to encourage replay, maybe a New Game Plus mode? Is that up for debate?

Levine: I'll just say that yes, we do think a lot about this topic. I can't talk about what we're thinking specifically. If we're going to do it, we want to find a BioShock way to do it. People will see more as time goes on.

I'm happy with my BioShocks being fun to play the first time through. What could they add to make a second play-through worthwhile?

BioShock Infinite Q&A: Ken Levine's PlayStation Moves [PlayStation Blog]

We showcase the work of a lot of talented artists here on Fine Art. But we're in for a real treat today, as few are as talented or as influential as Craig Mullins.

Even though these pieces are digital, Mullins' work maintains a traditional "painted" look, which explains why his stuff is both so evocative and easy on the eye.

In nearly two decades in the business he's worked on movies like The Matrix Revolutions, Forrest Gump and Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, and on games and game franchises as diverse as Halo, Prince of Persia, BioShock, Fallout 3, Marathon, Need for Speed 3, Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect 2. Just to name a few.

Because he's done so much awesome work, you'd best get a cup of tea and settle in: this is a big gallery, full of incredible stuff.

To see the larger pics in all their glory, either click the "expand" icon on the gallery screen or right click and "open link in new tab".

If you like what you see, there's a lot more artwork at Mullins' personal site, and you can buy fancy coffee table books from Ballistic (the same guys behind the excellent Sony art books) featuring his art as well.

Andrew Ryan was a visionary, dreaming of a utopian society where great men and women could live free of the rules and the government keeping them from realizing their true potential. His story begins in BioShock: Rapture, available today in bookstores everywhere.

Written by John Shirley, the award winning author of Cyberpunk classics like City Come A-Walkin', Black Glass, and the Eclipse trilogy, BioShock: Rapture is the story of the rise and fall of the city beneath the sea; a revealing look at how Rapture became the twisted husk it exists as when the player arrives at the beginning of the original game.

Given Shirley's talent for crafting esoteric tales of horror and suspense, he sounds like the perfect person to tell this story of the perfect civilization's spiral into madness.

BioShock: Rapture is available in stores right now. Shirley will be at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend speaking at the "Writing in Videogames" panel Friday, July 22 from 10AM to 11AM, after which he'll be signing some giveaway copies of the book at the Tor table in the main convention hall. Tell him Fahey sent you, and he'll look at you funny.

Ken Levine and Irrational Games are going to get all weird on you with the next BioShock game—not BioShock Infinite, the one after that, the one coming to Sony's new PlayStation Vita at some point.

BioShock creative director Ken Levine tells IGN that the next entry in the series that he announced at E3 2011 is "going to be strange and surprising to people," much in the same way that BioShock Infinite left fans of the first game scratching their heads.

"I think when we launched Infinite, people said, 'Wait, what, what are you doing?'" Levine says. "I think we always want to surprise people. If I'm just saying, 'Here's BioShock 1 on Vita'... you don't need us to do that. Somebody could make that happen if they wanted that to happen."

BioShock Vita, Levine explains that this "core game" is "its own thing, being built from the ground up" for Sony's PSP successor, not a casual leaning spin-off.

"For us, it's like, 'Hey, here's this weird experiment you want to do,'" Levine continued. "Experiments always carry risks, though. That's been the experience of working on BioShock Infinite. And working on BioShock. People saying, 'This is weird, risky, I don't understand.'"

After impressing us with the original BioShock and its skyward semi-sequel, we're going to give Irrational the benefit of the doubt. We'll try our damnedest to understand what BioShock Vita is aiming for, Ken. Promise.

BioShock Infinite and Beyond [IGN]

Artist Stefan Petit has spent the last six months working on a pet project: recreate all the posters featured on the walls of Rapture, the decaying city-state featured in 2007 shooter BioShock. He's now done!

There are dozens of images, which he's actually done in massive, print-quality sizes, though sadly (for fear of litigation) all we've got to share with you are these web-sized versions.

To see the full collection of images, head to Stefan's deviantART page, linked below.

Bioshock Project [deviantART]

Artist Stefan Petit has spent the last six months working on a pet project: recreate all the posters featured on the walls of Rapture, the decaying city-state featured in 2007 shooter BioShock. He's now done!

There are dozens of images, which he's actually done in massive, print-quality sizes, though sadly (for fear of litigation) all we've got to share with you are these web-sized versions.

To see the full collection of images, head to Stefan's deviantART page, linked below.

Bioshock Project [deviantART]

Despite appearing on stage at E3 to talk up the Wii U, BioShock designer Ken Levine has now told IGN this about the console: "Just to be clear, there are no plans. I'm not saying it can't happen, but we have no plans to do any games for that platform." Oh. [IGN]

It wasn't shown to the public at the time, but at E3 last month there was a BioShock Infinite demo that blew people's socks off. You may now watch that demonstration.

Below you'll find the entire fourteen-minute demonstration, which kicks in at the second "chapter" (around 4:20 in).

You can read our complete BioShock Infinite coverage here.