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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Eurogamer


The BioShock movie has suffered yet another blow after its director quit the film.


Juan Carlos Fresnadillo was set to direct with Pirates of the Caribbean shot-caller Gore Verbinksi as producer. But he's walked away.


"To be honest, by now, I'm completely out of that, and developing other stuff," he told IndieWire. "Right now it's on hold. The studio and the video game company, they have to reach some kind of agreement about the budget and the rating."


A film adaptation of the FPS classic was first announced back in 2008 before it took up residence in development hell.


In April 2009 Universal Studios demanded Verbinski trim down the project's swollen $160 million budget, and then, in February 2011, pre-production on the movie version of 2K's BioShock franchise ground to a halt after no studio was found who was willing to invest in an R-rated version of the tale.

Verbinksi said he wasn't willing to sanitise his "really, really scary" vision for the film in order to make it a more commercial prospect. "I couldn't really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating," he explained at the time.


"Alternately, I wasn't really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version. Because the R rating is inherent. Little Sisters and injections and the whole thing. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you're still shivering and going, 'Jesus Christ!'


"It's a movie that has to be really, really scary, but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the price tag is high. We just didn't have any takers on an R-rated movie with that price tag."


BioShock creator Ken Levine said in November last year there was "no need" to get the movie made.


"For us there's no burning [desire] to have a movie made just to get it made," he said. "For us and for Take-Two, it's really got to be something that will a) give the fans something that they want, and b) for those who don't know BioShock, really introduce them to something that is consistent with the game, and is it going to be a good representation of the game.


"There are differences between games and movies, no doubt, but the movie has to draw from the same DNA in terms of the world and the story beats. But you know, we don't have a need to get it made."

BioShock® 2


BioShock 2 launches on Mac in Janaury 2012 as a boxed game and a download - nearly two years after it launched on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.


The Mac edition, courtesy of Mac specialist publisher Feral Interactive, includes a separate multiplayer game, The Fall of Rapture, set prior to BioShock. You play a mutated test subject for plasmid manufacturer Sinclair Solutions. Yummy.


BioShock 2 on Mac costs £24.95 in the UK, €29.95 in Europe and $34.95 in the US. Expect it to be sold online from the usual subjects, the Mac App Store and Feralinteractive.com.


The minimum system requirements are: 2.0 GHz Intel Mac with at least 4GB RAM; Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later, and 256MB of graphics memory.


The following graphics cards are not supported: ATI X1xxx series, ATI 2400, NVIDIA 9400, NVIDIA 7xxx series and Intel GMA series.


The following cards require require 4GB of system RAM: NVIDIA 320M and Intel HD 3000.

Eurogamer


Grand Theft Auto 4 has now shipped a gargantuan 22 million copies worldwide since its April 2008 release.


That doesn't mean they've all been sold, but it's an indication of its enormous success nonetheless.

Company chairman Strauss Zelnick revealed the figure during a talk at ThinkEquity's annual Growth conference, reported IndustryGamers.


Take-Two (owner of 2K and Rockstar) said the Grand Theft Auto series has now shipped a total of 114 million units to shops around the world.


In comparison, breakout console success Red Dead Redemption has shipped 12.5 million copies. That game became the first of Take-Two's fleet to demonstrate anything like the success of GTA.


The two BioShock games have combined to ship 9 million units. A third BioShock game, BioShock Infinite, is being made for a 2012 release.


The Wii Carnival Games series shipped 8 million units.


The entire Midnight Club series shipped 18.5 million units. The Civilization series shipped 11 million units.


The Max Payne series managed to ship 7.5 million, and will also welcome a third instalment in 2012.


The two Mafia games shipped 5 million copies.


Borderlands, alone, shipped 4.5 million. Borderlands 2 will be released sometime between April 2012 and March 2013.


Last but not least, The Darkness, which shipped 1 million. Whether weak or not, it too is due a sequel, and that's also coming in 2012.


Notably absent from the Take-Two list was L.A. Noire, which we know to have shipped 4 million units.


Rumour has it that Take-Two is close to announcing Grand Theft Auto 5. But will Take-Two wish to detract attention from its already packed 2012 slate?

Video: Max Payne 3 now has Rockstar's full attention.

Eurogamer


The first book to explore the world of BioShock launches next Tuesday, 19th July.


BioShock: Rapture is by science fiction writer John Shirley, published by Titan Books and sold for £7.99.


It covers events from the creation of Rapture to a point before the first game.


Read a BioShock: Rapture excerpt on the official site.

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