Just in case you missed the announcement, here’s a synopsis of Bioshock Infinite:

Originally conceived as a floating symbol of American ideals at a time when the United States was emerging as a world power, Columbia is dispatched to distant shores with great fanfare by a captivated public.  What begins as a brand new endeavor of hope turns drastically wrong as the city soon disappears into the clouds to whereabouts unknown.

The player assumes the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the lost city to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned there since childhood. He develops a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Irrational Games has been working on a project entitled, Project Icarus. We’ll yesterday, Ken Levine revealed that project with a trailer and some information. The full name of the project now is Bioshock Infinite. So what’s different this time? Well, your no longer in Rapture any more but are instead in a city in the sky called Colombia. Hints of the underwater utopia are shown in the new city Colombia.  You can read the full press release after the break and be sure to check out the teaser trailer above.

2K Games announced today that BioShock®Infinite, a first-person shooter, is currently in development at Irrational Games, the studio behind the originalBioShock® which has sold over 4 million units worldwide. Set in 1912, BioShock Infinite introduces an entirely new narrative experience that lifts players out of the familiar confines of Rapture and rockets them to Columbia, an immense city in the sky. BioShock Infinite is currently planned for release during calendar 2012.

Originally conceived as a floating symbol of American ideals at a time when the United States was emerging as a world power, Columbia is dispatched to distant shores with great fanfare by a captivated public.  What begins as a brand new endeavor of hope turns drastically wrong as the city soon disappears into the clouds to whereabouts unknown.

The player assumes the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the lost city to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned there since childhood. He develops a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities.

“We are excited to expand the world of BioShock, which is one of the industry’s most critically acclaimed and beloved franchises,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “We believe that Irrational Games will lend their meticulous attention to detail and unique storytelling expertise to make BioShock Infinite an incredible entertainment experience that will immerse new and diehard fans of BioShock alike.”

With the original BioShock, Irrational Games won “Game of the Year” awards from Game Informer, IGN, G4’s X-Play, and BAFTAand redefined what players expect from a first-person shooter. “But when it came to begin work on BioShock Infinite,” said Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games, “we only had one rule: No sacred cows. This game is both true to what people love about the series and unafraid to question every assumption.”

Levine continued, “In order to explore the floating city of Columbia, we needed an entirely new engine. To bring Elizabeth to life, we had to build brand-new animation and AI systems. To create wide-ranging indoor and outdoor firefights at 30,000 feet, we had to rethink, rebuild and expand theBioShock arsenal. The only thing gamers can be certain of is this: the rules of the BioShockuniverse are about to change.”

BioShockInfinite is in development for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Games for Windows®,and is not yet rated by the ESRB.

BEES! BEES EVERYWHERE!

Today, 2K has announced that the Bioshock 2 Protector Trials are now available. The price for it is about $4.99 and your objective for these trials is to protect the little sisters from harm while they collect ADAM. Also included in the DLC is:

• Six new maps: three unique difficulty levels, each based on favorite locales fromBioShock 2;
• New unlockables, including never-before-seen concept art and videos;
• Seven new Achievements/Trophies.

This will be available for purchase once the store updates later today.

Splicers have grown more dangerous and gruesome from continued adam use.

Welcome back to Rapture!

Bioshock 2 takes place ten years after the events of the preceding game (now 1970) and the world of Rapture has taken a turn for the worse. The then decaying and leaking Rapture has entered a state of forsaken disrepair, including several locations that have been reclaimed by the sea. In Bioshock 2 you play as one of the first Big Daddies, named Delta. The main goal of this game is find your little sister, but each level has its own antagonist who will either attempt to guide or destroy.

You in your journey. The predominant force against your progression is Lamb, an altruist psychiatrist you believes you to be a monster. The story focuses on a journey of self discovery, trying to find out why you have been awakened and what has happened to cause it. The story will keep you gripped until the very end.  While the game still retains some most of the mystery and wonder that kept me playing the first game Rapture seems very familiar now. I played through the first Bioshock again a couple days before Bioshock 2 came out and when I transitioned games it almost felt like I hadn’t switched at all.   All of the first game’s splicers return, except for the nitro splicer, but over the years of continued splicing each enemy is now more deadly and gruesome than before. In addition to the old enemies several new enemies make an appearance in the sequel including Brute Splicer, Big Sisters, and the Rumbler Big Daddy.

The graphics in Bioshock 2 are okay but nothing new. Again, it just seems too familiar. The graphics were not upgraded very much from the original to the sequel. Even though the graphics are nothing special they complement the art style of Bioshock 2. A facial animation system was added to make the characters more lifelike. I did come across one texture glitch while I was playing, while in the area Pauper’s Drop strange lines started appearing across in a second story room. This was a single occurrence and when I returned to the area it had texture had returned to normal, so other than this the game runs very smoothly. Although the underlying graphics fell short the water and lighting excelled. Over the game the player will see the city become waterlogged and in some cases completely overcome by the dark ocean. The water was spectacular to say the least, seeing the supposed utopia breaking at the seams and watching the water flow in was just remarkable, but what were just breathtaking were the underwater scenes. Every once in a while Delta is cast into the ocean; these sequences give the player a break from the tension of Rapture to just take in the beauty of Rapture. It is a strange feeling seeing Rapture from the outside even though you know that within the buildings is a literal hell on earth; from the outside it almost seems serene. Lighting was yet another aspect that Bioshock 2 triumphed in, the water always casts a gloomy illumination on the room that seems beautiful and unsettling at the same time. Shadows are also used to scare the players, most commonly occurring around corners, and I have to saw seeing a shadow being casted by a splicer only to turn the corner and see an empty room. There are also short parts in the game were all you have to light the way is a flashlight, which always seems to cast eerie shadows wherever it is pointed.

Delta prepares to take on a Rumbler Big Daddy.

Sound is always something that is paid attention to in the beginning of the game but over time seems to fade into the background. In the case of Bioshock 2 much of the noise was in the background, whether it is the water dripping or the walls creaking. The sound of Rapture slowly being filled with water is with the player until the end of the game and over time it goes from a slow dripping to rushing water. Another background noise that added atmosphere to the game was the Rapture creaking and moaning under the pressure of the ocean floor. The voice acting was fairly good, nothing special, but delivered well. The splicers incoherent mumbling was always made me uneasy while playing, and whether or not you are carrying a little sister at the time will change what they have to say. Along with the voices, the sounds of the Big Daddies and security gave them their own personal personalities. The Big Daddies old and labored groaning made them feel like watchful old men, the happy chirping of the sentry bots made them seem childish, and the turrets constant beeping gave them the feeling of alertness. And, of course, there is nothing more terrifying than hearing the scream of the Big Sister on her way to take you down. The sound effects of the drill and guns were also done very well.

Multiplayer maps are based on levels from Bioshock.

Gameplay has received a complete overhaul from the first installment. Playing as a Big Daddy means that the player will experience more of and more challenging enemies than previously seen in Bioshock. Being a Big Daddy, the developers had to have something in the game that would make you genuinely afraid. The Big Sister fit this role perfectly, being more powerful and faster than you she is a formidable opponent. Overall the game did not provide enough of a challenge for me and without the return of super-human difficulty hard mode is as challenging as it gets. Delta can wield weapons and plasmids at the same time, which makes for more fluid combat and provides for the opportunity to certain combo’s such as freezing a splicer and then breaking him apart with the butt of your gun. Each weapon will also have a third upgrade which gives the gun a special ability, i.e. the maxed out rivet gun has a chance to set splicers on fire. The biggest addition to the gameplay is the adoption of the Little Sisters. No longer are you forced to either harvest or save them on the spot but instead you can prop them up on your shoulder and have them harvest adam for you. Once the Little Sister leads you to a body filled with adam Delta can build defenses to prepare for the splicers that try to take the adam for themselves. While at the beginning this break from the story seemed fun, near the end of the game it began feel labored and I almost just passed up some bodies just because I didn’t want to go through the defense sequence again. All weapons from the previous game are replaced by the new ones, although you can still find the old ones carried by splicers. Any weapon that you saw a Big Daddy use in the first game will be available to you in Bioshock 2, plus new ones, including a double barrel shotgun, minigun, and my personal favorite, the harpoon gun; which sticks enemies to walls. Hacking returns but with a twist, the Pipe Dream mini-game is replaced by a hack tool were the player must line up a moving point on small patches of green or red; green letting you advance to the next stage and red alerting security. If you hit neither green nor red you receive a small shock that hurts Delta for a minimal amount of health. Unfortunately plasmids did not receive the attention that the weapons did, there are very little new tonics, and you will remember almost all of them from the first game. All the old plasmids return such as fire, ice, telekinesis, shock, and insect swarm. The enrage plasmid returns under the name Hypnotize which will make enemies fight for you. Two brand new plasmids let you leave your body and use plasmids and hack security and summon sentry turrets to your side. There are a few scares scattered in the game but not as much as the first. Trophy Hunters will find themselves playing through the single player many times to get the platinum, but for casual gamers the single player attracts another play through because of the games four alternative endings. Overall the gameplay in flows much better utilizing the dual wield feature and is much more action packed.

Bioshock 2 provides a fun experience that still retains the feel of Rapture.

One feature that Bioshock offered that I was a tad apprehensive about was the addition of multiplayer. I was unsure of how the single player game would translate into a multiplayer experience, and I am excited to say that Bioshock 2 has completely erased any feelings of doubt from my mind. The multiplayer delivered phenomenally and will keep you playing for hours at a time. Multiplayer includes ten maps, all from the first game, and although they seemed a little big for Bioshock’s 5 vs. 5 matches it actually plays very good. There are seven game types to choose from, your basic free for all, team death match, and king of the hill; but two game types really seem to bring Bioshock into the multiplayer. One is capture the sister, a single flag CTF but the defending team has one random player chosen to be the Big Daddy and defend the little sister. Big Daddies are available in most of the game types but is very overpowered in free for all, if someone grabs the big daddy suit and knows how to use it, they will most likely win. The other is adam grab, or its team based counterpart team adam grab. The goal of this game is to hold on to the little sister as long as possible. Players can choose from multiple characters and customize them to their liking. You can also make your own load-outs comprised of two weapons, two plasmids, and three tonics. New plasmids and weapons were made especially for multiplayer such as aerodash, which lunges you forward at enemies and knocks them back, and the drill gun, which unleashes powerful projectiles with a fast fire rate but needs to be charged up first. You can also hack turrets and vending machines, but the hacking mini-game is replaced by a progression bar. Photography is also used in multiplayer, when you kill someone you have the option to take a picture of their body which gives you a damage bonus against that player, but be aware that if they kill you, you will lose that damage bonus. Weapons are also upgradeable such as; automatic firing for the pistol, a faster fire rate for the shotgun, and larger clip for the machine gun. You progress through forty levels with unlocks for almost every one so there is no period were you get level up multiple times and gain nothing. The progression system and upgradable weapons will keep me playing until, at the very minimum, I reach max level. Reaching level forty will also be challenging because I have played the multiplayer for a while now and I am only fourteen. The multiplayer experience is fun and addictive and will keep you playing for a long time.

DLC will hit Bioshock 2 in March.

Just today, we have received word that 2K will be releasing Downloadable Content for Bioshock 2 in March. Here’s the full press release containing what will be included as well as price:

2K Games Announces Extensive Downloadable Content for BioShock® 2

New single player and multiplayer additions enrich the Rapture experience by adding a wealth of new content and features

New York, NY – February 22, 2010 - 2K Games announced today an aggressive post-launch downloadable content plan for BioShock®2 that extends and enhances the single and multiplayer experiences by adding more glimpses into the award-winning world of Rapture. Downloadable content will be made available soon beginning with the Sinclair Solutions Test Pack, available this March from the Xbox® LIVE Marketplace for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Games for Windows-LIVE for 400 Microsoft Points and from the PlayStation®Network for $4.99. Future expansions into the world of BioShock 2 are slated to arrive over the coming months and will continue to expand on the stories of the denizens of Rapture.

“The fans who waited in the snow, rain and cold for the midnight launch of BioShock 2 have spoken and their message is that Rapture still has many fascinating stories to tell,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “Downloadable content is a key part of our efforts to continue to entice the fans that have made 2K a household name – we intend to deliver single and multiplayer content that respects and expands upon one of the greatest fictional worlds ever created.”

Sinclair Solutions Test Pack, the first of several planned downloadable packages, contains a number of customization features that will allow players to further their character’s development in BioShock 2‘s multiplayer modes and provide a deeper multiplayer experience. The pack includes:

• Rank Increase to level 50 with Rank Rewards
• New playable characters Louie McGraff and Oscar Calraca
• 20 new trials*
• A third weapon upgrade for each weapon
• Five additional masks*

*Some items are only available after a player achieves a rank of 41 or higher.

In the coming months, 2K Games will also be publishing downloadable extensions of the single player experience that provide new insight into the world of Rapture. These packages will include more narrative, new tools and new challenges that extend the lore and fiction of the failed Utopia under the sea.

This will be the first DLC for Bioshock 2 as well as many others later in the year. Tell us what you think in the comments.

Questions answered for the highly anticipated Bioshock 2

Bioshock is just around the corner and before the release, we had a privilege of being in a conference call with the Developers of Bioshock 2 were we listened to many questions being answered. The team we got to speak to during the call was:

2K Marin’s Creative Director – Jordan Thomas

Lead Designer – Zak McClendon

MP Lead Programmer – Jesse Attard.

Lead Environment Artist – Hogarth De La Plante.

On the Multiplayer side we had from Digital Extremes:

MP Art Director – Mat Tremblay

To start off the call, Jordan gave us a quick synopsis for Bioshock 2:

Bioshock 2 takes place 10 years after the events of the first game.  The player takes on the role of a prototype Big Daddy called subject Delta.  He is separated from the Little Sister and wakes up 10 years later to find it to be a much more dangerous place.  He comes into conflict with Dr. Sofia Lamb, an altruist and a former political rival of Andrew Ryan.  She united the city into a cult called the Rapture Family and the player, as an individual, became a big threat to her plan.

The multiplayer takes place between the years of 1959 and 1960.  You take on the role of the average citizens of Rapture, thrown into that conflict.  You grow your character and participate it in that classic BioShock play, but in a much more therapeutical Utopian, you take on the city before the war tore it apart.

Beware the Big Sister.

And now, The questions:

How does the sequel expand on the original BioShock Story?

Jordan: A few different ways.  The focus here is on choice and that the player is defined by the moment he was granted free will this time around, in contrast to the original.  Unlike other Big Daddies, Delta is not enslaved to the city and you’ll have to make a number of ethical decisions which shape the outcome of the plot in a way that wasn’t possible in the original.  Andrew Ryan is now dead and in his place, Dr. Sofia Lamb has control.  She is a very different thinker, kind of based on John Stewart Miller or Karl Marx.  She is unwilling to allow any individual to compromise her plan.

What are the elements from BioShock that you most wanted to keep and what were the aspects that you most wanted to improve upon?
Zak: The big stuff that we obviously wanted to keep from BioShock, from a gameplay perspective, was the focus of a sort of clear choice and getting the kind of role, your own shooter, and play the game you wanted to play and the diversity of that tool set.  The deep story with the actual sort of moral choice.
From the gameplay perspective that we were trying to improve was a lot of that core gameplay and make it more accessible to people in the way that you can combine your weapons and plasmids at the same time.  We also wanted to deepen the growth mechanics of the game.  You can upgrade all of your plasmids by three levels, they have new functionality as you go through the game.  The tonics are a lot more open-ended and we also wanted to grow the ecology of the world.  BioShock 1 has the great Big Daddies and Little Sisters dynamic and we sort of wanted to expand on that idea of this world having its own sort of self-sufficient system.  Which of part of where the Big Sister, who lives at the top of that Atom ecology, kind of came from.  So a lot of it was improving on aspects that were already there or finding a way to make them more accessible and friendly to a wider audience.

Why are you playing as a Big Daddy and what’s the purpose of BioShock 2?

Zak: Playing as a Big Daddy was actually one of the first things that we decided on the project.  Making a BioShock 2 was really challenging.  We were looking for ways that we could reevaluate a lot of things about the gameplay and the change of protagonists  was one of the best quirks.  Knowing that you can play as a Big Daddy we got to reexamine how his weapons work, how the character feels, how the balance of combat would be.  It would really be a good thing for us to bring a fresh perspective to all the gameplay of BioShock.  Beyond that, it was just something that was hugely receipted by fans and by people who played the first game.  It was something you got a glimpse of at the end of BioShock 1 in a way that made people really want to have that drill or the rivet gun and all the cool things that you expect from BioShock 1.

So on the Big Daddy how does this prototype differ from the original BioShock?

Zak: The original Big Daddies, you know, the Bouncer, the Rosie, they’re very well encumbering powerhouses.  With something for sort of the length of a single player game, we knew that level of power was really seductive to people, we knew that we couldn’t do an entire game where you were trudging around at the slow, lumbering pace of those Big Daddy characters. Delta is a lot more agile than the classic Big Daddies, he obviously can use plasmids, regulate the weapons, but the big difference is, of course, that he has free will and he’s able to make his own choices and really whitty, moral choices in the story, as the story goes along as well.

Who is actually in the Big Daddy suites?

Jordan: The first game states, outright, that they are humans abducted from the city of Rapture and augmented heavily with Atom and sort of graphed into diving suits.  The story of the protagonist of BioShock 2 is more of a mystery and we won’t spoil that one.

We know Big Daddy played a typical protecting role in BioShock 1, where were the Big Sisters in BioShock 1?

Jordan: They’re actually grown up Little Sisters.  Only a few that escaped the great cult. Those who have grown up, have become physically unstable as the atom, that they have been injecting for years and years and years, have been a manifest.  That’s really where they were, they were gathering from corpses.

Big Sisters design is amazing, what experiences did you draw upon to create them?  Any unique features for design decisions that you would like to point out?

Zak: The obvious is the Big Daddy classic diving suit.  The Big Daddies have this kindly, old man; weary, lumbering appeal to them.  The Big Sisters were meant to embody this awkward adolescence phase where your body is larger than what you’re used to dealing with and so they’re very wise and a little awkward in their posing and they have leg braces.  They’re still very graceful in their kind of awkwardness.  Beyond that, we try to break through the softer edge and have some more of those little girl feelings since these are Little Sisters who grew up too fast.  There are some smaller details that you may not notice during gameplay are the ribbons on the baskets that they use to carry the Little Sisters, small child-like drawings on her tank and other small details in the character design that if you stop and take a look at it, you’ll notice.

Have you made the choice whether or not to harvest the Little Sisters any harder this time around?  In the first game you lost out on enough by saving them to make it a simple choice before they become this powerful regardless of whether you saved or harvested them.

Zak: Yes, that’s been a common criticism in the first game and it’s something we tried to make those choices around the Little Sister, a little bit more play.  It’s harder to be good and more rewarding to be really truly evil with the Little Sisters in BioShock 2.  If you straight up save the Little Sisters in BioShock 2 and never engage in the adoption gameplay, you are going to be starving for atom for the entire game.  On the other hand, if you are as terrible a person as you possibly can, you go around and adopt and partner up with the Little Sisters and then you harvest them later, you’re going to be really flush.  But if you’re a player that really wants to work for it and gather atom from bodies and save Little Sisters, you can keep pace with the best player who harvest them outright, but you’re going to be doing a lot more work for it.  For those battles that get a little more difficult as the game goes on, it’s a lot more alluring to sort of cash in on a Little Sister immediately by harvesting her and get that quick reward rather than doing it the hard way of gathering from bodies. So that gameplay choice is a little bit more reflective of the choices that go on in your head when you’re trying to deal with complex situations.

You can explore the ocean floor, correct?  Are there added bonus or advantages to look forward to?

Zac: The big event is being able to see Rapture from the outside for the first time and that was what was compelling about it to us is seeing this gorgeous, amazing city from a different perspective.  Rapture from the inside is this dangerous, intense place.  Some people would play the first game and we’d talk to them and they would say that they never felt safe and how they never got to really enjoy the beauty of the environment.  Beyond that, there’s some exploration value of the outside areas and you can find some of the original atom slugs out in their original habitat and use that to grow your character a little bit more and those are hidden in some of the outdoor spaces as well.

What are the puzzles going to be like in BioShock 2?  Will players have a new set of puzzle challenges and will the rewards be greater?

Zac: On the weapon upgrade side, there is a third upgrade for every single weapon and what we try to do there was instead of an incremental stat increase, each weapon would have different functionalities.  So with your standard second upgrade, you get a larger clip size and it does more damage, but the third upgrade adds a sort of an ease element.  You hit that with repeated shots, it will light them on fire.  For the drill, the third upgrade actually adds kinds of a big, giant, magnetic coil on the end of it so it can reflect projectiles back and its incoming attackers.  So the upgrades have the third one that people will want to work for and once they’ve got to it, will change up their gameplay style a little bit.  On the puzzle elements, BioShock 1 had the minigame for hacking and we changed the hacking system substantially to try to get it to integrate it with the core gameplay, but you’ll have to balance between the combat that is going on around you at the same time.

The original BioShock added a few side attractions, such as hacking and photography, to the gameplay.  Will there be any other side items to give some additional flare to the game?

Zac: The photography and research definitely makes a return but on hacking we went out of our way to sort of integrate it into the core FPS combat loot and really use it as an opportunity to lure the people into using the more complex tools.  So, it’s now under the metaphor of a video camera unlike the still camera in BioShock 1.  When you tag a splicer or enemy with this research camera, you’re basically graded for a short period of time, whether you have 30 – 45 seconds to combat that splicer in a creative way and at the end of that time, you are rated on a standard scale on how well you did and how creative you were.  As you get research points, you unlock upgrades and different perks and new tonics and things like that.  But the hope is that players will really experiment with it and not sort of use the same tactics over and over again.

"Adding multiplayer was tricky, and was a huge challenge"

Now for some questions regarding the Multiplayer:

With this being BioShock’s first into the realm of multiplayer, how tricky was it? Describe the fine line between keeping the atmosphere in the single player mode and creating an involved, exciting multiplayer aspect to the game.

Matt: It was really tricky, a huge challenge.  The world of Rapture is so rich with developments and the experience as a single player going through that world there is so much to look at and so much to experience.  That’s really what made Rapture, Rapture, in a lot of cases.  The trick was to take that and make it into a multiplayer environment where you have many more technical issues, such as ten players and have performance targets and all that type of stuff.  But we worked really closely with Hoagy and everyone else over at 2K and set up some guidelines and really try to match the visual targets while maintaining all the technical targets that we were trying to hit.

How many different multiplayer modes are there and up to how many players can play at once?

Matt: We have seven modes and ten players max.

Will there be an online coop or will it be only multiplayer?

Jesse: Other than the team-based game modes, there’s no cooperative play in BioShock 2.

Which is the multiplayer mode that you think is the most entertaining?

Matt: There are clearly a lot of choices there, but I think Capture the Sister is really my favorite.  Only because I spent a lot of time playing CTS in days gone by.  But what’s really great about it is that there’s elements of the game that everyone knows and loves, with a Little Sister added in the mix there’s more personality there and lots of interesting little feedback type of scenarios that happen with her.  It just adds a dynamic element to what is a standard game.

How do you approach bringing new players to the franchise while keeping BioShock players satisfied at the same time?  Was it difficult to create a storyline that new and returning fans will appreciate?

Jordan: Yes.  We knew that there would be people who were attracted to the choices that we made for the sequel, but who had never played the original and others who have probably gone through multiple playthroughs and for them Rapture was too familiar.  Our approach to that was sort of a layered one, in that the introductory layers of the game are designed to make the players who know the events of the city kind of experience them afresh.  For example, a child’s eye-view of Rapture is sort of a vision behind Ryan’s amusement, kind of like a propaganda theme park where the children of Rapture were kind of like shocked out of ever wanting to go to the surface.  At the same time, for the new players, that perspective serves as a crash course in Ryan’s philosophy, the fall of the city and so forth.  Past the Act 1 level, we start to break new ground that will be for both audiences equally.

"Who really is in the Big Daddy suit?"

Does the PS3 version of the game have special features and how are you taking advantage of the system this time around, as opposed to the first game?

Zac: As Hoagy mentioned, with the multiplatform development, we want to offer the same exact experience across the platforms and there’s nothing particularly exclusive to one or the other.  Which ever one you buy, you get the same experience we intended.

If you could pick one aspect that you improved on, on the sequel, what would that be and how did you improve upon it?

Zac: The dual wielding, being able to use your plasmids and weapons at the same time.  As I mentioned before, it’s really transformative to the whole experience and you no longer have to think, “I’m going to switch to my plasmids, use that, switch back to my weapons, equip the wrench and hit the guy.”  It’s part of one fluid action for the players.  It was one of the first things that we added and it just changed the way the game played, substantially.

During development, did you feel more in competition with the original BioShock’s narrative (especially considering the narrative is what most people consider the most memorable aspect of the game) or the game’s gameplay?

Jordan: I think there were significant challenges on both fronts in the sense that the gameplay, to be a legitimate sequel you need to combine these mechanics in new and interesting ways.  There were a number of criticts of BioShock as a shooter, as compared to others.  I think Zac had his work cut out for him to kind of bring it up to par.  With that said, on the narrative front, you kind of have to flush what has been done before to offer a story that is as mysterious as the original.  The challenge for us in the narrative department was kind of to meaningfully surprise people without having just said, “Oh yeah, all that stuff that occurred in BioShock 1, that didn’t happen.  We’re taking it very loosely.”  Or do some kind of simple minded reboot in the name of originality that would’ve pissed off, frankly, a lot of our core fans.

Was it difficult to get those floating bodies to look just right?

Hoagy: Yeah, that was pretty hard.  A lot of the flooding sequences we did are just custom hand animated and hand treated by our tech artists to make them look just right in that particular instance.  In terms of floating bodies and floating stuff it was tricky because our tech team had to tune the bliancy model so the stuff would be neutrally bliant so it floats in one place even after a period of time.  So yeah, it was kind of tricky and it’s just right.

Does BioShock 2 feature multiple endings like its predecessor?

Jason: Yes, the sort of endings are at once kind of more dynamic, more triangular than the the original game offered.  I think more importantly your choices start inform the story before the ending this time.  We felt that offered a better ramp into, rather than just kind of finding out, “Gosh, I’m Jesus or HItler” five seconds before the credits roll.

And that concludes the Q&A. Thanks for 2K games to invite us into the conference and be sure to look out for our Bioshock 2 review later this week.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dive back into Rapture with this trailer for Bioshock 2. Bioshock 2 releases on Febuary 9th. This trailer is intended for users at the age of 18 or up.

Video Games | BioShock 2 | Turf Wars Multiplayer Gameplay

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Video Games | BioShock 2 | Civil War Multiplayer Gameplay
XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Video Games | BioShock 2 | Capture the Sister Multiplayer Gameplay
XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Somewhere, beyond the sea.....

The Cult of Rapture has just reveled the offcial boxart for Bioshock 2. What more can we expect from the city of Rapture? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Over 1,300? That's more than 1,000!

In case your eagerly awaiting the anticipation of the soon to be released game Borderlands, GameStop is having midnight launches to celebrate the release of Borderlands. Just in case you plan to go out here is the list for stores that are hosting the midnight event. Remember, Pandora is waiting…