BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

[Beantown]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

That...looks....awesome.

[Miles_Yuhas]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

Yeah it looks absolutley incredible. I can't wait to see more footage.

[Candyman5]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

So much for peoples fear of thinking that since you are a big daddy that you will feel less freaked out. Wow.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

BioShock 2 Podcast

We begin the BioShock 2 podcast series by talking with two key figures shaping the future of the game: Jordan Thomas, Creative Director at 2K Marin, and Hogarth De LaPlante, Lead Environment Artist. Both veterans to the BioShock franchise, they worked on the first in Boston and moved to California in 2008 to found the new studio and begin work on the much anticipated sequel.

From podcast:

Elizabeth: Writing and building a video game can be likened to a novel, a comic, or a film. Like those other mediums, when creating a game, the developers have to think about more than just the gameplay, but about the story, the world, the ideas they want to convey and the style in which they will express them. For many, video games go further than any book or film can in allowing a person to step into another world and imagine themselves in a place entirely other than the one they live in. For Jordan and Hoagy, they had some important stuff they wanted to continue from BioShock 1, as well as new areas that hadn’t been explored before.

Hoagy: Just the idea that we knew it was going to be awesome to come back to R, but how do we make sure that that is going to be really awesome for an audience who’s already been there. So, that was, for me, working on the environment, that’s been my primary challenge. I think we’re doing a great job of making it fresh and mysterious and awesome again. I think there are some thematic hallmarks of the BS title. You know, it’s interesting, working with a different creative director this time around, it’s interesting to see what Jordan pulls out of the world of BS, that he fixates on as the interesting things as opposed to Ken who we worked on it with the last time around, so there is still the background and backdrop of the Objectivist utopia that was what Ken thought was so fascinating about that world. But now we’ve got that in the background, and Jordan’s adding on top of that the things that he thinks are interesting about the characters and the world, and what ADAM does to them, and the power struggles that happen. I think it’s just really interesting for me working on it to build on it that way.

Jordan: For me, on the one hand, the new mystery comment that we’ve now managed to plug a few times around is something that I feel extends into the philosophy of Rapture, that coming back to BS means that you need to be introduced to new ideas. Hoagie was talking about some of the thing I’m interested in, the nerdy stuff that I dig about R, but I also feel that while we can’t go in too deep because it would spoil the plot, I also feel that it’s important that if you come to BioShock 2, that you get exposed to schools of thought that we didn’t touch in BioShock 1, and that are interesting contrasts to Objectivism. So, some of our characters will be ideologues like Andrew Ryan was for BioShock 1, but have a very different point of view. And then, on the gameplay front, I did feel like in BioShock 1 we managed to bring some interesting choices to the FPS. My feeling is, this time around we need to increase that expressivity, that when you decide to be the fire guy or the electricity guy, that over the course of the game rather than just zapping a little harder or lasting a little longer – or really just keeping up with the Joneses of the splicers that you’re meeting along the way – your tactics are changing. You’re gaining new usages and learning to pull out the bank shot, and the Rube Goldbergian trick shots that people tend to really dig. Furthermore, your Big Daddy weapons, you’re evolving those throughout the game. So by the end, you’ve really rolled your own shooter. By the end, you’re playing an entity that did not exist at first and is wholly yours.

Elizabeth: Becoming a Big Daddy sounds like an awesome experience, but as I said, they were the thing many feared most. Ask a veteran BioShock player how he felt the first time he faced a Big Daddy and I promise, the tale will be harrowing. All this talk of bad *** weapons and becoming one of the most powerful elements in Rapture makes me ask: Who do you fear now? The Big Sister, Jordan says back.

Jordan: The player is a prototype, which puts in the position of being smarter and faster than the average Big Daddy. The idea is that the later models were simplified and brute-like, and the player was designed to take a different role, essentially. That puts you in the place where other Big Daddies are a legitimate threat. If in a single player game, you were this unstoppable singular force, but if you were to face yourself, that would be a huge challenge, so the Big Daddies are still a very legitimate threat. Splicers in large groups. Splicers are the degenerate drug addicts who have become addicted to this drug called ADAM, and have been altering their DNA over and over again and causing them to fall apart but get more powerful at the same time. In large groups, those guys are still very much a threat to you. And then there are new splicers to come in BioShock 2 that have managed to survive all of the time between the events of the first game and the second, and those guys, because they have managed to basically, in a completely closed system, be the ones, the top predators, they are a real threat to you. And finally, on top of all of that, there is a brand new character who is borne of Rapture’s tragic history and who takes a place at the very top of the food chain. So in BioShock 1, you would have these sort of dynamic and very consensual boss fights against the Big Daddy characters. Well, there’s a character called the Big Sister, who is watching all of your interactions with Big Daddies and Little Sisters, the sort of gatherer characters that follow Big Daddies around and siphon ADAM out of bodies, and every time that you take a Little Sister out of the ecosystem, she [the Big Sister] becomes angry because you’re disrupting the status quo. For her, Rapture coming back to life and functioning as it did in her memories is very important, and so she watches you for a while and then she comes and hunts you down. She is kind of a literal hybrid between a Big Daddy and a Little Sister. The idea is that she’s an ex-Little Sister, an important Little Sister who returned to Rapture, unable to leave it behind, and put herself through the process of becoming a Big Daddy. But it only half-worked, and somehow her armor is custom-fitted around her and she is this lithe, ultra-dysfunctional figure that is powerful but unstable.

Elizabeth: Even after all this talk, I still felt that I had really only scratched the surface of what BioShock 2 really was, but having experience BioShock 1, that didn’t surprise me much. The “twist” of the game is still hailed as one of the best moments in video game history, and much of the thrill of playing through that story was the experience of uncovering the mystery. But for the player who has already been to Rapture once before, and learned the sordid tale of Atlas and Andrew Ryan, would BioShock 2 still remain mysterious?

Jordan: I would say definitely. The setting in BioShock 1 was the mystery. This time around, we’re bringing you in to locations that are informed by new ideas, and, in fact, your entire identity is again a strong mystery, with a touchstone that comes from the first game. I know what a Big Daddy is, but you definitely don’t know what the PC is, he is a unique entity. So our feeling is not only need the story be mysterious, it also has to be very unified with the kind of gameplay that you’re dealing with. So we mentioned earlier that you’ve got the plasmids, and I think you asked about some of the tools involved. In BioShock 2, the plasmid system has deepened quite a bit, and this reflects the fact that ADAM, this genetic force, this stem cell-like material that has run wild in Rapture, is changing the city, and it’s also affording new opportunities on the plasmid front. So the plasmids are deepening, and each time that you upgrade one of your genetic superpowers, it gets a new crazy usage rather than just “MORE DAMAGE” or “LASTS LONGER” and meanwhile, you’re learning how ADAM has affected Rapture since, and how the Big Sister is involved with all of that.

Hoagy: Yeah, I think also, the most compelling mysteries this time around are - as Jordan said, it was really environmental mystery and who am I? the first time, but I think this time around, it’s really the characters you meet as you go through the game and how they’re related, to each other and how they’re related to the city of Rapture that is going to be the really compelling mystery. There are actually a handful of characters from the first game that are in this one. Like, Tenenbaum makes an appearance, and she’s related to what’s happening in the story very closely and you start to learn about her and other characters that we can’t talk about today. The cool mystery comes from the characters and their relationship with each other.

Jordan: Yeah, we heard a lot from fans of the first game that they wanted closer environment with live, non-spliced characters who were sane and you could have a moment of respite where you’re dealing with somebody who seems coherent. So in BioShock 2, we’ve got a new cast of characters that you get to participate in those moments with, and actually make choices about their fate, which allows you to affect the greater story in a way that we weren’t able to do with the first game. You know, we had the one central choice with Little Sisters, and we’ve got that again, and we’ve actually evolved that quite a bit, but the choices related to the adult characters, the ones who are more grey, are entirely new.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

From the May editions of OXM UK and PC Gamer:

• You're the first Big Daddy ever built, and by far the most powerful.
• Bioshock 2's story is entirely about the Big Daddies, the Little Sisters and the lives they once had.
• You’re the reason every other Big Daddy after you was brainwashed and crippled – you were too good, and you were involved in some unknown incidents that caused Suchong to abort his plans to make other creatures like you: “suffice it to say they decided to simplify”.
• Tenenbaum will be your advisor over the radio, as Atlas was last game.
• The Splicers that have survived for ten years are “apex predators”, who are at the top of the “Adam food chain”.
• You have the option, nicknamed the “superdick” option, which is to adopt a Little Sister, carry her around on your shoulder, take the ADAM she extracts from corpses and brings to you, and then kill her and take all of her ADAM.
• The game is nothing like the “horrible escort quest” in the previous Bioshock.
• Single Splicers or ones in a small group will flee when they see you.
• Whether you can go in it or not, there will be a sunken ship in the sea bed surrounding Rapture.
• There will be more people like Sander Cohen in the game.
• There will be more weapons you can wield than the drill and Rivet Gun, and you can upgrade all of them.
• Once you upgrade Cyclone Trap, you can combine it with almost any other Plasmid, not just fire, e.g. "Ice Traps", "Rage Traps", and even "Security Traps".
• When you drill a Splicer there is a large amount of blood, some of which splatters on your visor.
• Big Daddies will still put up a fight, and can top themselves up with health, so you can’t erode them down by constantly respawning.
• You will have “strong and unforgettable encounters with unspliced characters that you can develop genuine empathy for”.
• There is still hacking, and you can heal security bots.
• There are multiple endings and you’ll know which one you’re heading towards, you will make many choices that will resonate into the end-game.
• Underwater sequences are entirely optional.
• There will be no combat underwater, just a chance to punctuate the action and allow the art team to “go nuts”, but you can find and harvest live ADAM slugs on the seabed.
• Some of the really moody and emotional parts of the game will happen underwater.
• Tenenbaum is still grief-stricken ten years on, especially about the Big Sister due to her origins.
• The Big Sister, due to her mental conditioning, tried to turn herself into a Big Daddy when she realised she was too old to be a Little Sister, and started kidnapping girls to bring to Rapture to restore order.
• You are not on a quest to stop her, she is on a quest to stop you – you are trying to escape Rapture and to do this you use the Little Sisters for saving, killing or adopting so you can receive ADAM. This infuriates the Big Sister, as you are undoing her work to restore order to how she believes it should be.
• Some parts of the Big Sister, like her legs, show her flesh, and she is “skeletally thin”.
• The Big Sister has much more powerful versions of certain Plasmids – for instance a version of Telekenesis that hurls everything in the room at you in a "giant tornado".
• Big Sister can hunt you down anywhere in a level.
• There is an inverted form of the relationship you had with the Big Daddies in Bioshock 1. In that game, you followed around a Big Daddy until you had it where you wanted it and "jumped it". In Bioshock 2, you are the Big Daddy, and the Big Sister is doing the same to you, constantly stalking you.
• There are special things to the prototype Big Daddy and the Big Sister we don't know about yet that will be revealed later, like how you can beat her in each fight without killing her and how you can respawn without Vita-Chambers.
• The game will celebrate your “free will”, contrasting with the previous game.
• It still seems the game will not be a straight sequel, may be partly a prequel.
• Multiplayer is still not revealed, but will be in the next issue of PC Gamer.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

Gamespot video feature. Shows a little bit of new footage.

BioShock 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to 2007's hit game. Key members of the development staff speak about its development in this exclusive interview.

...

Some more info:

Games™

• "The city has reached a state of equilibrium. The first game felt like the end of the end, but now its ten years later and the remaining people have managed to find some level of ecological stability. The city itself is going to have aged. The walls will have panels ripped off and water coursing through. There will be a lot more flooding" - De La Plante
• "We need to trust the player with harder choices, and greater moral agency, allowing you to shape your own role within the narrative in a way we didn't touch in the first game. We think we've done that" - Thomas
• "We cant go into too much detail, but there absolutely are new kinds of splicers, and a lot of them are a significant threat to a Big Daddy"
• There will be gameplay benefits of adopting the Little Sisters and you'll also be confronted by the emotional reality. "We're turning the precise threshold where its interesting and heart-warming rather than annoying but the Little Sisters allow you to access content you wouldnt otherwise, and they'll even comment on the choices you make"

OPM UK

• Marin didnt say whether you can use the weapons dropped by splicers, saying "a lot of the player weapons are made for the Big Daddy". These weapons, and the others currently unknown about, are all heavily upgradable. "A fully upgraded rivet gun is pretty ridiculous.. And you can have it pretty early in the game". The drill fist can be extended to drill deeper, or lubricated to bore into your enemies for longer without overheating.
• The team wants you to try everything, so the level 1 versions of most plasmids are free to aquire. Once you've settled on the ones you want, they want to make sure that specialisation doesnt just mean repetition with better stats - hence the change of control method as Incinerate levels up.
• When you're carrying a Little Sister, any corpses with ADAM you come across will be highlighted. Wherever and whenever you like, you can set her down and tell her to start 'gathering'
• The team tease that if you can resist harvesting her to get all of the ADAM that she has collected and take her to a vent, that there are ultimately different non-ADAM rewards for that.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

Eurogamer Preview

With Thomas's background in horror - designing The Cradle in Thief 3, and Fort Frolic in the first BioShock - that side of the game is also amplified. "Because you play this sort of armoured prototype who's pretty much designed to survive, I kind of have to strike the player obliquely on the fear front," he says. "I have to wage psychological warfare against the player."

"I think BioShock 1 was very much a tragedy - the horror of loss, and of exposure to the dysmorphic effects of these characters who have been distorted by ADAM - and in BioShock 2, I hope there will be a horror of emotional context as well, that I can cause you to experience massive cognitive dissonance from time to time and keep you guessing. That's at the very least my goal. I think fear is very important to BioShock, as is tragedy, and it's toeing the line between those two that is both what makes the challenge compelling and BioShock unique."

Thomas says that BioShock 2 "validates all possible choices the player could have made" at the end of its predecessor, and there's a consensus about choice within the game. "The kind of levels that we want to put you in are more about the old Warren Spector/Looking Glass dichotomy of problems rather than puzzles," says lead level designer JP LeBreton. "Puzzles have an explicit hard-wired number of designer-intended solutions, and for the most part we want to put a lot of different tools in the environment and the player's hands."

Throughout the time I spend in Marin, the narrow parameters of the discussion are a stumbling block. But in a sense this is also encouraging: it was the nature of BioShock that every answer generated a dozen more questions. Even months after the game was released, the debate surged back and forth about the significance of details and design choices. The fact that fifteen minutes of BioShock 2 gameplay and two hours of interviews leave so much open to interpretation (the butterfly in the trailer, for instance) is the game's most important, and promising, characteristic.

"I am very interested in systems of play as kind of gardens in which you can plant the seed of a question and allow the player to shape how the thing grows," says Jordan Thomas, explaining his ambitions. "And specifically, that doesn't really work unless your mechanics are very unified with the kind of story you're telling, and so I am striving, shall we say [he grins], to generate a similar resonance from the sort of the high themes all the way down to the base mechanics.

"I can't really say how, because it would be a giant *** spoiler, but it is important to me that BioShock 2 is worthy of the name - not just as narrative, and not just as a kind of series of meaningful player decisions, but also particularly as a videogame that asks interesting questions, and from which players can derive meaningful statements."

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

Digital Extremes Making Multiplayer Mode for BioShock 2, First Details

2K Games Reveals First Details Of The BioShock® 2 Multiplayer Experience

Digital Extremes tapped to create extensive and exciting multiplayer element for 2K Games' highly anticipated shooter

Windsor, UK, May 8, 2009/... 2K Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), announced today that it has signed a partnership with Digital Extremes to develop the multiplayer experience for BioShock® 2. Under this partnership, Digital Extremes is working closely with the creative team at 2K Marin to develop a new and substantial element that enhances the lore and fiction of the BioShock universe.

“The fans asked for a multiplayer experience and we answered,” said Christoph Hartmann, president of 2K. “With Digital Extremes delivering a multiplayer experience for BioShock 2 that features all of the things that make BioShock unique, we’re holding ourselves to a high standard so that we can deliver the depth and variety that fans of the BioShock universe demand.”

Multiplayer in BioShock 2 provides a rich prequel experience that expands the origins of the BioShock fiction. Set during the fall of Rapture, players assume the role of a Plasmid test subject for Sinclair Solutions, a premier provider of Plasmids and Tonics in the underwater city of Rapture that was first explored in the original BioShock. Players will need to use all the elements of the BioShock toolset to survive as the full depth of the BioShock experience is refined and transformed into a unique multiplayer experience that can only be found in Rapture.

Key features:

• Evolution of the genetically enhanced shooter – Earn experience points during gameplay to earn access to new Weapons, Plasmids and Tonics that can be used to create hundreds of different combinations, allowing players to develop a unique character that caters to their playing style.
  
• Extend the Rapture fiction – Players will step into the shoes of Rapture citizens and learn more about the fall of Rapture as they progress through the experience.
  
• See Rapture before the fall – Experience Rapture before it was reclaimed by the ocean and engage in combat over iconic environments in locations such as Kashmir Restaurant and Mercury Suites, all of which have been reworked from the ground up to deliver a fast-paced multiplayer experience.
  
• FPS veterans add their touch to the multiplayer experience – Digital Extremes brings more than 10 years of first person shooter experience including development of award-winning entries in the Unreal® and Unreal Tournament® franchise.

BioShock 2 is currently in development at 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes for PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows-based PCs. This title is not yet rated by the ESRB.

[Flawless]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

9 minute walkthrough:

<embed src='http://videomedia.ign.com/ev/ev.swf' flashvars='object_ID=14240341&downloadURL=http://xbox360movies.ign.com/xbox360/video/article/982/982366/bioshock2_trl_walk051209c_flvlowwide.flv&allownetw orking="all%"' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='433' height='360'></embed><div style='width:433;'><a href='http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/142/14240341.html'>Bioshock 2 at IGN.com</a></div>

[Miles_Yuhas]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

^^Remember when a lot of us were sketch about this game when it was announced, I want to take that back. This looks absolutely amazing.

[GSW]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

i never played Bioshock the original.

looks like ill be picking that up along with ym 360 on friday evening.

[Wet Bandit]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

BioShock 2 seems to be shaping up to be everything that I don't want. I don't want to play as a Big Daddy. Part of the appeal in the original was the David vs. Goliath feel of you vs. a Big Daddy. Fighting a Big Daddy was an event, and not one to be taken lightly. Being a Big Daddy, I don't know, it's like a Goliath vs. slightly bigger Goliath fight. Just doesn't do it for me.

And I don't want to explore underwater in the sea. The first game had such a great atmosphere in part because you were in such a vulnerable environment. It was uncomfortable being underwater unnaturally like that. Even if there was never really a threat of being lost to the sea, it was still a bit unsettling. Now, though, it's like a walk through an open field, being able to move through the sea at ease. There's no tension to the environment now.

And I certainly don't want a multiplayer portion to the game. The resources being used there are, in my opinion, are better used elsewhere. I have no desire for a multiplayer BioShock, and I can't imagine it's gonna pull that many people away from Halo/Modern Warfare/Killzone, etc. Looks nice on the back of the box, I suppose.

It's weird, because I really want to be enthralled. The first half of the first BioShock, up to and including the 'would you kindly' cut scene, was absolutely phenomenal. Since then, though, it's just been disappointment for me. Hopefully the game surprises me.

[frostbyte06]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

i never played Bioshock the original.

looks like ill be picking that up along with ym 360 on friday evening.

Go to half.com, I just re-picked it up after I sold it a while ago like and idiot. Got it for $20 for the PS3, and the prices tend to be cheaper for the XBOX version.

[Miles_Yuhas]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

i never played Bioshock the original.

looks like ill be picking that up along with ym 360 on friday evening.

Make that priority 1A.

[RoyalBoyle78]

Re: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams

Never played the first either, I bought it the other day off ebay sealed for $22 shipped. I hope I enjoy it.