Articles: Shock of the New: Bioshock 2 Interviews

Detailed art deco environments and a complex storyline drawing together the threads of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy with Orwellian dystopia (plus explosions) are unlikely ingredients for a video game.

That didn’t stop BioShock from becoming hugely successful. Not only was the game a best seller, it topped end-of-year lists and, more recently, best-of-decade roundups too.

Developer 2K Games has been hard at work over the past couple of years in an attempt to top that success, with development of its follow-up taking place in both California and Canberra simultaneously.

Set 10 years after the events of the original game, BioShock 2 again takes place in Rapture, a crumbling city hidden under the sea, where the player takes the role of a ‘Big Daddy’, a genetically engineered being with its organs grafted to a diving suit.

Martin Slater, developer and studio director of 2K Australia, confirms that expectations were high for the follow-up. “There’s no point without pressure,” he tells Tone. “One of the core drives is to exceed what you’ve done in the past, and having such a high bar with BioShock 1 really made everybody focus and pull out all the stops to make sure BioShock 2 exceeded in every single way.”

The sequel uses an optimised version of the engine designed for the original game, featuring smarter AI, more detailed environments with more physical objects for characters to interact with, improved graphic and sound capabilities and faster performance overall.

“There was a large amount of engineering involved and technical advancements in the game across the board,” says Slater. “We’re trying to push the limits of what we can get out of the current generation consoles, and push it absolutely to the max.”

Not having to build the sequel from the ground up, however, meant 2K could focus on actual game play, rather than the nuts-and-bolts of programming.

“We started out on the base BioShock engine and moved forward. That’s the great thing with sequels; you can start with a known quantity and go back to all the things you knew you could make better from the first one and just work to improve the engine,” Slater explains. “As a game team, we’ve focused a lot more heavily on the actual game design than the actual game mechanics, as you’re spending less time on the actual game technology. A hell of a lot of work was spent in making it just run faster, meaning we can put more stuff on screen, we can get bigger effects, better explosions, better water, better everything.”

Many of the improvements or changes in the sequel came from the developers listening to fans’ opinions of the original game.

“We spent quite a bit of time making sure we were going to make the right games for the fans,” says level designer Alex Vancomerback, who trawled the forum and read everything the critics had to say on the original game.

One of the decisions that flowed from such criticism was to remove the ‘pipe hacking’ minigame – not a favourite with the fans. The boys at 2K reckon that removing the mini-game makes BioShock 2 flow more freely, excising the breaks in play.

“It was breaking the immersion quite a bit,” admits Vancomerback. “They are attacking you, and you go and hack and actually pause the game in the first one. Now it’s all happening in real time.”

2K also responded to calls from fans by including a multiplayer element – an omission that was one of the only real criticisms of the first game. Taking place 10 years before the first game, the multiplayer mode sees characters participate in the civil war in the city of Rapture.

Unlike the original game, BioShock 2 will be released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC simultaneously. Vancomerback explains that far from being a direct port from one console to another, each version has been tailor made for its particular gaming machine.

“There has been lots of optimisation on the engine for the consoles,” he says. “On PC there was some dedicated resources to make sure it wasn’t just a console port for the PC.”

As a bonus, BioShock 2 will support the new line of Nvidia’s 3D glasses for the PC.

But despite years of development and fine-tuning, the one real question remains: is BioShock 2 going to be any good?

“We want people to enjoy our games. There really isn’t any point in making bad games,” says Slater. “Seeing people loving it and reviewing it as they are is probably about the single most rewarding part of the work that goes in.”

Check out the next issue of Tone for an in-depth review.

What’s New in BioShock 2

*Big Daddy’s Drill

Players get to lay the smack-down as a genetically modified Big Daddy, replete with an enormous drill.

*Use Plasmids and Weapons Simultaneously

There’s no need to choose anymore – players can use their ungodly powers with the left hand while shooting mutants with their right.

*Big Sister’s Watching

Faster, smarter and nastier than the original Big Daddy: Big Sister attacks without warning or mercy.

*Getting Out & About

Players are no longer limited to the confines of Rapture, with Big Daddy free to roam about on the sea floor.

*Kill Your Friends

Fixing the one real problem with BioShock, the sequel adds an entirely new multiplayer game set during Rapture’s civil war, which took place before the original game.

by Tim Grey