BioShock™

I love a good plot twist. I will always remember the moment in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic when I found out who my character really was, and always remember the moment in BioShock when I found out who the real baddie was. These things make a game, they sear it into our memories.

But once you know the secret what then? The game is done more or less. You might get a bit of mileage from playing again and spotting the clues, but there are no real surprises left to be had, not unless you're Nier Automata but let's not go there now.
But what if a story could change? What if it was fundamentally different a second time around?

I got to thinking about this recently after talking to a man called Ray Winninger, the head of Dungeons & Dragons, tabletop side. He's only recently been appointed that position after spending many years away from Wizards of the Coast, but he's been involved with and playing D&D most of his life. He professionally wrote campaigns as a teenager and even played with the game's creators, Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. Dungeons & Dragons is in his bones.

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BioShock™

A new BioShock game is in the works, publisher 2K has confirmed.

The project will be in development for the next "several" years, 2K said in a statement today, with development centred at the publisher's newly-named Cloud Chamber studio.

Cloud Chamber is headed up by Kelley Gilmore, formerly of 2K's XCOM and Civ studio Firaxis, with offices in both San Francisco and Montreal.

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BioShock™

OK, so I know Eurogamer's actual birthday was two days ago, but as is our style, the Eurogamer video team is once again Late to the (birthday) Party.

Over the past three years, we've been introducing each other to our favourite (and/or least favourite) games from yesteryear as part of our Late to the Party series. During that time we've shared our love (and/or hatred) for over one hundred and fifty different games and thanks to this, we've been able to make a compilation episode of LTTP that features one game from every year that Eurogamer has been alive.

In this video, Aoife, Zoe and I are joined by some friendly video team faces from the past (who?!) as we play our way through the 20 years worth of games, including 1999's Dino Crisis, 2006's Gears of War and 2017's PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Basically, if you want a healthy dose of nostalgia (or just want to feel rather old) this is the video for you!

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BioShock™

As Eurogamer turns 20, we thought, you know what? It's not all about us. It's also about the developers, the people behind the virtual magic that inspired the creation of Eurogamer two decades ago. Without the developers, we wouldn't be here. And so, we thought we'd ask a few of them (20, in fact!) to pick the games that defined the last 20 years, and see what would come of it.

We approached a broad range of people, from top executives and legendary talent to tiny indies. We asked them to pick a game that defined the last 20 years, but left it up to them to interpret the question. It could be a game that defined the industry, that meant a lot to them professionally or personally, or is just a favourite.

We're delighted with the responses (thank you to everyone who contributed!). There's some fantastic insight here, super cool anecdotes and the odd surprising choice. We hope you enjoy it!

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Half-Life 2

There is a saying in architecture that no building is unbuildable, only unbuilt. Structures may be impossible in the here and now, but have the potential to exist given enough time or technological development: a futuristic cityscape, a spacefaring megastructure, the ruins of an alien civilisation. However, there are also buildings that defy the physical laws of space. It is not an issue that they could not exist, but that they should not. Their forms bend and warp in unthinkable ways; dream-like structures that push spatial logic to its breaking point.

The Tomb of Porsena is a legendary monument built to house the body of an Etruscan king. 400 years after its construction, the Roman scholar Varro gave a detailed description of the ancient structure. A giant stone base rose 50 feet high, beneath it lay an "inextricable labyrinth", and atop it sat five pyramids. Above this was a brass sphere, four more pyramids, a platform and then a final five pyramids. The image painted by Varro, one of shapes stacked upon shapes, seems like a wild exaggeration. Despite this, Varro's fanciful description sparked the imaginations of countless architects over the centuries. The tomb was an enigma, and yet the difficulty in conceptualising it, and the vision behind it, was fascinating. On paper artists were free to realise its potential. If paper liberated minds, the screen can surely open up further possibilities. There's no shortage of visionary structures within the virtual spaces of video games. These are strange buildings that ask us to imagine worlds radically different to our own.

Whilst many impossible formulations are orientated towards the future, there are also plenty from the past. The castle in Ico is one example of this. During the Renaissance, Europe was obsessed, not with future utopias, but with ancient Greece and Rome. While the box art of Ico is famously inspired by Giorgio de Chirico, the long shadows and sun-bleached stone walls only make-up a portion of the game's mood. It is the etchings of Giovanni Piranesi that best capture what it's like to explore the castle's winding stairs and bridges. Piranesi's imaginary Roman reconstructions were absurdly big - so colossal you could get lost in just the foundations. In a similar way, Ico's castle is impossibly large, the camera zooming out in order to overwhelm you and build up the unfathomable mystery of its origin and purpose.

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BioShock™


"I forget everything between footsteps.

"'Anna!' I finish shouting, snapping my mouth shut in surprise.

"My mind has gone blank. I don't know who Anna is or why I'm calling her name. I don't even know how I got here. I'm standing in a forest, shielding my eyes from the spitting rain. My heart's thumping, I reek of sweat and my legs are shaking. I must have been running but I can't remember why.

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