Irrational has (mostly) sunk beneath the gaming industry’s ever-turbulent waves, but its spirit lives on. And by that, I mean the rather tumultuous work environment gave birth to one last piece of DLC before massive (and by many accounts, inevitable) layoffs struck. BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode One was a mixed bag, but Episode Two has a shot at going out on a high note. There are plenty of solid ingredients in place: we’re back in Rapture, we get to play as Elizabeth, and apparently we can entirely> avoid killing anyone if we want to. 1998 mode is a bonus option with a heavy emphasis on stealth, and if some referential fake box art is to be believed, it’s rather heavily influenced by the original Thief.

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In a post on the Irrational Games website titled “A Message From Ken Levine”, the BioShock creator announced that he’s “winding down” Irrational Games. What does that mean? All but a core team of fifteen developers are being laid off, so that the remaining few can focus on new ideas, “a long period of design”, and the idea of “replayable narrative”.

This is a surprise. … [visit site to read more]

The first part of Burial At Sea, BioShock Infinite‘s Rapture-bound DLC, met a mixed reception. Alec loved its pre-fall beauty and felt frustrated by its inevitable, violent turn and quick end. Which I suppose means there’s plenty of reason to feel excited by the arrival of part two.

Irrational want to whet your appetite for wetness with a three-minute video, but be warned: it assumes you’ve played part one and will heavily imply spoilers if you haven’t. (more…)

BioShock could have made a wonderful movie. But realistically it would never been a wonderful movie, even if plans for a Gore Verbinski-helmed adaptation of the Irrational’s opus hadn’t been abandoned. It could only have been an overload of CGI that sacrificed depth and tone for a visual onslaught. I’m sure of that, and I’m glad the movie didn’t happen. But the real reason it didn’t is that backers Universal were spooked by the commercial limpness of the Watchmen adaptation, taking it as a sign that there wasn’t enough of an audience for an R-rated sci-fi movie at the kind of budget Verbsinki demanded; he then wouldn’t agree to a much a lower one. A later attempt at a cheaper movie by 28 Weeks Later director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was nixed by Ken Levine, who told Eurogamer that “I didn’t really see the match there.”

The movie did at least make it to concept art stage, a few examples of which have recently emerged, and depict new areas of Rapture planned for the big screen. (more…)

Please note that while this piece contains no overt plot spoilers for any BioShock game, it does feature some allusions to their major events and does presume at least some familiarity with them.>

“The problem with utopia is it’s still full of people.” A fair sentiment indeed, but is it truly spoken by a dispossessed citizen of the fast-failing undersea brains trust that is Rapture, or is it a BioShock Infinite developer lamenting that they need to somehow insert humanity into their singularly lavish shooty-bang game?

It is wonderful to be back beyond the sea, but things are different now. (more…)

Oh look, here’s a release date for the first BioShock Infinite story DLC, Burial At Sea. This, you may recall, recasts Infinite’s protagonists Booker and Elizabeth in the undersea social experiment that is Rapture, and thus entails both a brand new story beneath the waves and a chance to catch up with old chums such as Big Daddy and his syringe-loving chums. Irrational have been coy about exactly when it’s due out, until about five minutes ago when they brazenly proclaimed it would be on November 12. That’s around one Earth fortnight, or 17 Venusian aafgf-ghhhrnights. (more…)

Bioshock has that one part>, the stunning moment that locks the game in the memory forever. I’m talking, of course, about the opening plane crash and the first view of the lighthouse. The descent into Rapture, like the ascent into Columbia, employed tidy, efficient techniques to build a world that was eerie, allusive and oddly attractive. Alec wrote an entire post about that first sight of Rapture. The opening five minutes of Burial At Sea, Bioshock Infinite’s narrative DLC, contain a different side of Rapture, as Booker and Elizabeth walk the corridors before the Fall. Spoilers abound, obviously, with the plot’s initial direction outlined as the two take in some familiar sights.

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The Modern Day Icarus videos that heralded the arrival of Bioshock Infinite were thoroughly enjoyable as far as marketing nonsense goes. Faux documentaries that showed glimpses of the city in the sky, its populace and artefacts, they were entertainingly odd and managed to win my approval despite showing nary a glimpse of the game itself. As the Burial At Sea DLC approaches – and with it a return to Rapture – 2K have released a new video, in the same style, examining the Modern Day Atlantis. It’s not quite as effective, mainly because I expected more than the sort of annoyance I greet Jehova’s Witnesses with when the narrator gravely intoned, “That’s when this happened”.

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As you’d expect, there are a bunch of screenshots to accompany the news of BioShock: Infinite’s DLC. There’s an odd, unhelpful and irrelevant shot of Elizabeth for today’s challenge pack, Clash In The Clouds, but more importantly, there’s the first glimpse of a pre-fall Rapture, for the forthcoming Burial At Sea campaign.

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So, as guessed by people paying attention to Ken Levine last night, there’s to be BioShock: Infinite DLC. What a surprise. What’s more of a surprise is that one bit is out today. That is Clash In The Clouds, and is a bunch of challenges. Below you’ve got a trailer for that, and a teaser for something called Burial At Sea, which will be a new campaign set in Rapture!

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