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Reactions: Irrational Games announces BioShock Infinite

Remember when 2K Games said that Ken Levine and Irrational were working on a new IP that could be turned into another franchise? Turns out that was only half true. For all intents and purposes, BioShock Infinite is what BioShock 2 should have been–a game built on the core gameplay elements of BioShock, but set in a different world with a completely new story. So while Infinite is still using the BioShock name to unscrupulously boost sales, it could technically spawn its own series of spin-offs set in the new city of Columbia.

And what a city it is. It’s the turn of the 20th century and America, an emerging player on the world’s stage, sets out to show everybody just how grand it is by building a floating city in the sky that flies around the world and champions steam-punk imagery. “Unlike Rapture, this wasn’t a secret, underwater city constructed in silence and hidden from the world. [Columbia] was constructed in broad daylight in the 1900s America as an example of the success of the American experiment. This was like the Apollo project for the 1900s,” says Levine. “But as the city floats around, to show the despots and the tyrants the success of our system, something terrible happens. As it turns out, this isn’t just a flying World’s Fair; Columbia is a Death Star. There’s a terrible, terrible international incident, and it turns out Columbia is armed to the teeth.” After this “international incident” the city disappears into the clouds and nobody hears from it for a while.

So you, Booker DeWitt (a character who is said to be much more defined than the blank slate of Jack from BioShock), head up to Columbia several years after its disappearance (1912 to be exact) in order to find a girl who’s been kidnapped and held prisoner. But to put a spin on things, “Finding Elizabeth is not the problem. Busting her out of her immediate prison is not the problem. The problem is you discover this woman is incredibly powerful. This woman is at the center of the conflict that is tearing the city apart. So once you bust her out you have to work with her, combine your abilities, combine your powers, and form a partnership to get out of this city.” Hmm, I’m sensing a definite possibility of co-operative support for this game.

As for the gameplay mechanics we actually know about so far, Infinite will feel a lot like the other entries in the series. It’s an FPS infused with super-natural, magic-like powers. This time around we won’t shoot up for our fix of plasmids, but we will consume a “vile-looking potion.” According to 1UP:

The powers you and your partner Elizabeth wield come with much more immediate consequences as well: After every increasingly tense encounter, Elizabeth looks weaker and weaker. She hacks and coughs on the floor, and her nose starts to bleed. Ken [Levine] says, “This is a world where there are consequences. This is not a world where people toss around super powers that come without costs. We’re telling the story of real people caught in an unreal situation.” And while that seems a lot less binary than the Little Sister conundrum in the first game, I don’t doubt your own moral choices will play an important role in the game.

Whether the consequences of using these new plasmids super-tonics, for lack of a better term, are purely tied to gameplay or if they cross over into the realm of narrative is uncertain at this point. It’s definitely an interesting concept, though.

If you’re worried that this is simply going to be BioShock in the sky, then perhaps it will comfort you to know that “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 the BioShock arsenal. The only thing gamers can be certain of is this: the rules of the BioShock universe are about to change.”

So while we don’t know the specifics of BioShock Infinite yet, we do know that it’s going to have a unique setting that’s just a much a character as any person. It’s also going to say something about the ideals of a specific era in America. The player’s character is going to be more of a character this time around. The world will have an assortment of steam-punk inspired foes to deal with in all manner of combat scenarios. And most importantly, it’s going to present an atmospheric world driven by non-linear combat and a philosophical story. So maybe it’s not what everyone expected out of Irrational Games (not exactly as original as I’d hoped), but there are worse things than applying the Final Fantasy model to BioShock. Look for Infinte sometime in 2012.

Author: Cody

Tags: 2k games, bioshock infinite, irrational games, ken levine