Bioshock

[Mortis]

Ah! I believe we need a love thread for this one:

I know at least Ripatius and I are looking furiously towards Irrational Games' next installation, Bioshock, in the PC cyberpunk/sci-fi joint game genre they almost singlehandedly managed to establish back in the 90s alongside with Looking Glass. Yes, I'm talking about the System Shock games!

Recently, while looking for more pieces of information on the game, I eventually ended up reading an interview with the game's main designer Ken Levine at the Through the Looking Glass forums (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108044) ... and guess who I saw there! Vraptor7!

Peculiar meetings, as there is really no common denominator involved in this scenario - though I guess confessing a love for quality writing in games should really make this kind of accidental hook-ups much less unusual.

If you do happen to notice this, Vrap (you have posted every now and then after all!), do let us know! We're still looking forward to you hanging around in irc, too. I know this site itself doesn't profess much in the way of action, excitement and content, and while that is going to change, it's really the irc side of things that really does make it feel like a working real deal right now.

Anyhow! For anyone interested, here are a few useful links for Bioshock information:

TTLG Bioshock: http://www.bioshock-online.com/ ( http://www.sshock2.com/bioshock )
Bioshock Nation: http://www.bioshock.co.uk/
Bioshock @ Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock
Official site: http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/
http://www.bioshockgame.net/
http://www.bioshockhq.com/

[vrap]

You saw me there at TTLG because it's one of the few places that I very regularly hang out these days I'm sorry I've not been around here or on irc, but I've only just gotten access to the internet in my room after a long time, so only now have been getting back into my internet lifestyle. I'll install irc soon and get back in #kaka.

Bioshock is currently the only upcoming game I am interested in, moreover I am extremely excited about it. We are drooling over it like rabid wolves over there at TTLG, tearing apart and overanalysing every little detail that gets released. There's many aspects to it that attract me, not least that it is aimed at being the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, one of my favourite games of all time.

The fact that it's art direction follows the art deco style.

The fact that it's setting is a vast undersea city.

The fact that the city's time period was '30s/'40s/'50s (all three have been quoted in interviews); the point being that it was a time where there are no such things as computers, and everything adheres to a mechanical/analog theme rather than an electronic/digital one.

The fact that they hired one guy to develop the water technology which has been worked on for over a year. Water simulation in games has been a fetish of mine for years.

The fact that there is a complex AI system that consists of few but vastly complex AI archetypes which interact with the world and each other in quite innovative ways.

Stuff like that I seriously cannot wait for this game.

[nobile]

woot vrap!

[vrap]

Bioshock video soon!

[Mortis]

http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/793/ ... ids_1.html

Based on this video it quite looks like the game is still somewhat early in the last stages of development - a lot of it seems to be there but it doesn't feel that polished yet. Interesting nevertheless.

[Mortis]

[09:44] <pushBAK> i agree
[09:45] <pushBAK> the demo movie on IGN is even worse cause the art director won't shut up about how "innovative, and defying all the rules of a first person shooter it is"
[09:46] <pushBAK> and during the demo his voice is like as if he's an "actor" rather than just a dev talking about his work..
[09:47] <pushBAK> and he keeps talking about how the people that were living in the undersea city were just normal ppl, and there's not "monsters" like in regular fps, then he walks into the next room and there's a chick doing backflips with a scythe and she can jump and cling to the ceiling.. :/
[09:48] <pushBAK> what fucking planet do these big game developers and publishers live on?

Ouch! OUCH!

[Mortis]

http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/

Looks all right, and you even have a HTML site (that is image heavy, though - why the hell are HTML sites always carbon copies of the Flash sites? Isn't the idea that... well never mind.)

I'm just disgusted by the "Forums coming soon" picture at the Forums section... how can this "placeholder site" thing still happen, after years and years? They never learn! They never do!

[Mortis]

vrap actually commented on the "new" put-together trailer on his Bioshock/Incubus blog, something that I forgot to do, mostly due to its rudimentary nature: I didn't really feel it offered anything new. Anyhow, you'll have a better report there.

As for the rest, I truly do hope I'm wrong, as this is the very game that could actually make a difference as far as gameplay philosophy goes, but all of the trailers this far have been foreboding at best; unless drastic changes are implemented to the game during the next six months, the game will fail to catch up with the original hype.

[vrap]

My own fears, which I haven't really voiced at all anywhere, are not unlike yours. Up til now, there's nothing in all the footage we've seen of the game that isn't already there in existing games. We only happen to look at it all in a slightly different light because of what we've been promised, but the truth is that we actually couldn't tell what makes BioShock very different from other shooters, firstly because it's pretty difficult to demonstrate some of game design mechanics and secondly because they've not even shown situations where we could make a good judgement. For example, the random, unscripted behaviour of the different AI's is something we can't really judge, because all the encounters we've seen with the enemies could have easily have been set up (the scripted ambushes of Doom legacy), and there's nothing to tell us that those encounters could be very different every time you come across that location. That was one of my first misgivings with the initial gameplay demonstration, that the narrator was telling us something pretty cool, but we were seeing something not very convincingly conveying that particular feature. There are quite a few features the game is supposed to be introducing that if delivering as promised would surely have some effect on the genre. So it's really a two-faced problem, and they've done nothing to address it in all the months since. Knowing the studio, we have a good chance of them delivering, but it doesn't mean I can't worry in the meantime

p.s. New Blackfield album, two thumbs up for Silversun pickups, two thumbs down for Sundays.

[Mortis]

I think skepticism is welcome, or at least hasn't worn out its welcome yet It's easy to get hyped up and then be disappointed - with reasonable doubt and restraint, you can be delightfully surprised instead!

[Strawman]

http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=40270

Screenies ahoy!