Post: BioShock 2 Preview
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04-26-2009, 01:51 AM
#1
Cobra-D
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Originally posted by another user
(PC)
Also On: PS3, 360
Release Date: Q4 2009
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Genre: Shooter
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
Rapture. That isn't the exact emotion I felt when I took that first step out of the bathysphere and into the underwater city of the same name. But like in Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" music video, with the eerily stretched grins warning you that, underneath it all, things just aren't quite right, this dystopian city, by any other name, isn't just as creepy. It's no wonder then that 2K Marin, with creative director Jordan Thomas at the helm, is returning to the first game's setting as the sequel's primary location. If you recall, Thomas is responsible for BioShock's Fort Frolic section, and in little under an hour, he managed to share with the large group of games press I was part of some details on BioShock 2's direction, all the while hinting at the surprises to come. Here's a bit of what I learned.
Welcome to Rapture, Again
It's been 10 years since the happenings of the first game, with its protagonist Jack presumed dead from a debilitating ailment or death-by-splicer-takeover, depending on which ending you earned. The way BioShock 2 will reconcile the two endings is actually quite clever. With Rapture free from Andrew Ryan's splicer puppeteering and Frank Fontaine's "kindly" cajoling, Rapture's surviving residents actually start to mythologize the past, developing two at-odds theories as to what really happened, the results of which should be apparent in the new environments and dialogue alike.
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Given a decade of shooting up addictive Adam, those remaining splicers from the first game have now evolved, or should I say devolved, into even more creature-like beings. At the end of the first game, it was revealed that intense use of Adam causes you to grow physically dependant on the chemical -- an addiction so intense that the body simply can no longer live without it. These long-time splicers are adapting to their dependency, turning feral, gaining elongated limbs, and displaying extreme agility.
And while BioShock 2 will take place in the same city as the first game, that isn't to say we won't see any new locations. According to Thomas, the sections of Rapture we've seen to date have only been a very small "slice" of what the underwater city has to offer (thanks to the player's very direct goals). After all, this secret society was supposedly built with thousands of specially tapped brilliant minds, and the structure would need to be able to house them all. One such new location will be Fontaine Futuristics, the place where all of Rapture's biotech comes from, plasmids included. When asked about the state of the city's overall decay (all of what we saw in the first game was in ruins), Thomas remarks that though he can't go into specifics, players may return to locations from BioShock that are now submerged in water, while yet unseen sections of Rapture may be comprised of untouched pockets.
You'll also encounter a lot more than just splicers this time around. According to Thomas, BioShock 2 will have players interacting more directly with non-spliced humans, who are crucial to the storyline in some fashion.
But while many things may have changed, others remain eerily the same. Someone's managed to start the cycle all over again, with an influx of newly turned Little Sisters padfooting it about Rapture finding "Angels" from which to harvest precious Adam. And with the appearance of Little Sisters come yet another batch of newly initiated splicers, all craving that next hit. So BioShock 2 will have all those same old splicers you came to love in the first game. (I never thought I'd call these splicers "normal" but they're the normal ones.)
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Original Gangster
Wherever there's a Little Sister, a Big Daddy is sure to be found. That is, unless a pack of splicers managed to gang up on it and take it out. They'll have to use pack tactics to do that, which is exactly how the Adam junkies will try to deal with you, because, you see, in BioShock 2, you play as the original Big Daddy. As an early prototype model, your suit is lighter, making you more agile than the Big Daddy types you see in active duty. And unlike your stint in the suit toward the end of the first game, this time you can actually use Big Daddy-type weapons -- and even dual wield them -- like the drill and rivet gun, along with a few surprises. (You also feel much more like a real Big Daddy -- jumping down from a high ledge produces a satisfyingly weighty sound.) For use of those weapons, however, you must trade away your free will...at least, that's how it's supposed to work. The short demo Thomas showed had the player waking up to Tenenbaum's voice on the audio device telling you to wake up. Apparently someone has gone through the trouble of severing the brainwashing connection to Rapture's mind-controlling system, letting the player become the only Big Daddy with free will.
With your newfound freethinking ways, you can make your way through Rapture, backtracking through your past in order to chase down your former humanity. And unlike the "non-defective" golems, you're free to also upgrade your weapons and skills any way you see fit, including the option to use Adam for plasmid powers. According to Thomas, "We've taken away no [plasmid] functionality...whatever your favorites were, they have indeed extended." Take the cyclone and fire plasmid powers from the original game for example. When enough points have been put into them, you'll be able to lay down cyclones on the floor and then add fire to them to create spinning, fiery traps for unsuspecting splicers.
As a Big Daddy, you'll also have the ability to use heavy weapons such as the rivet gun (think: a giant's pistol equivalent) and drill (a powerful melee weapon you can rev up to do damage, though it does have an overheating meter you need to watch). You can put points into upgrading these weapons as well so you can get skills like the currently named "Daddy Dash" where you lunge forward with the drill extended in front of you for a quick and powerful jab.
If you're the type to love BioShock's hacking minigame, and you had tons of spy bots and turrets working on your side, then you'll be delighted to know that as a Big Daddy you'll also have the ability to invest points in this area, allowing you to do things such as healing your bots, or, as Thomas says "essentially being a pet master type of character."
You must login or register to view this content.
Under the Sea
"In BioShock, the ocean was very much a character too," says Thomas. For BioShock 2, rather than keep the watery depths at a distance, as something pretty and moody to gaze upon beyond glass, 2K Marin has opened up the ocean floor surrounding Rapture to the player. Exploring the ocean takes place on a pretty limited scale in that it isn't "open world." As with the rest of BioShock, everything is carefully designed. But going into the water does afford you a few advantages. You can't use any weapons under water, and the wonderfully suited music really lends itself to that calm, exploratory mood, giving you a breather between smashing up those splicer hordes. You also can find audio diaries, pick up loose Adam slugs, and pocket any useful debris. Walking around outside Rapture's glass windows also lets you peer in from a different perspective, one a splicer or regular human wouldn't be able to experience. The tactical advantage, of course, is that you can now look into certain rooms and alter your plan of attack based on what types of enemies you see in there.
Little Sister All Grown Up
And now we come to it: The Big Sister. Her existence seems to be a somewhat divisive subject amongst fans of the first game. On the one hand, it may seem as though this is a cheap way to come up with a nemesis for a Big Daddy. On the other, it's a pretty compelling story point: After the events from the first game, Tenenbaum took up a group of rescued Little Sisters to the surface, setting them free, and most moved on to lead normal lives. All except one. For whatever reason, she couldn't leave Rapture alone, so after she grows up, she finds a way to return. And as you can see from the teaser trailer released last year, she displays some special powers as well.
To be honest, I wasn't too fond of the Big Sister character design myself until I saw it in motion. Her long legs and skinny armor make a lot more sense when you see her leaping from a balcony and landing in a crouch on top of a statue, or practically skating across a large glass window. Her long needle-like attachment on her arm lets her harvest Adam from splicers much like the Little Sisters do, albeit brutally.
You must login or register to view this content.
Since you're a Big Daddy, whenever you encounter a Little Sister in the game, you can choose to either betray her inherent trust of the Big Dadddy father figure by harvesting her for Adam, or you can Adopt her, putting her up on your shoulders. If you choose to Adopt, the Little Sister will be able to point out prime Adam-filed splicer corpses. Set her down next to the body, and she'll start collecting it for you. However, this draws out all nearby splicers, creating a sort of arena-style encounter, with you having to defend the Little Sister against the onslaught until her work is done.
And as it turns out, this Big Sister has been going up to the surface and kidnapping girls from the Atlantic coast and turning them into Rapture's new Little Sisters, so, understandably, she's a bit protective of them. She can sense that you're no longer under mind-control and whenever you interact enough with a Little Sister by either Adopting or Harvesting them a set amount (if you recall, after three rescues in the first game, you'd receive an Adam-filled bear present), Big Sister will get angry and hunt you down wherever you are in the level.
Here's the kicker: you can beat her. In fact, doing so will award you with a special reward of some kind. It would seem disingenuous for such a strictly directed experience to let you kill off the game's main villain at any time in the game...except she isn't the main bad guy. Someone else is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Speculations Abound
Like me, you undoubtedly have more questions. It would seem that these small first details are just enough to get the curiosity wheels turning. And while I pray BioShock 2's twist ending, if there is to be a twist ending, remains a secret until I can take my first journey through this narrative-driven sequel, I'm anxious to find out more about Rapture 10-years later, and all the new characters we can expect to find there. When asked about the good-guy-who-is-a-bad-guy template, Thomas dodges the question, saying he wants you to mistrust everyone. He does, however, mention that your "long term decisions do play into the ending," and that you'll be able "to see it coming." He continues, "This time around the decisions centered around Little Sisters have a Little Sister-centric component of the ending. Meanwhile, the decisions you make on the adult characters, the more grey characters, who may tempt you in different ways, affect the ending on a more adult axis." Does this mean BioShock 2 will have modal endings? I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
On a lark, I asked Thomas about the stunning blue butterfly at the end of the Sea of Dreams teaser trailer. He sing-songingly teases: "Can't tell you!" Will it be the "grand unifying theory," with its solitary emergence from the once submerged barnacle a signifier of what's to come, or is it merely a red herring? More sinister yet, is the butterfly the game's ultimate boss villain? After all, no one ever suspects the butterfly...
Also On: PS3, 360
Release Date: Q4 2009
ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
Genre: Shooter
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
Rapture. That isn't the exact emotion I felt when I took that first step out of the bathysphere and into the underwater city of the same name. But like in Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" music video, with the eerily stretched grins warning you that, underneath it all, things just aren't quite right, this dystopian city, by any other name, isn't just as creepy. It's no wonder then that 2K Marin, with creative director Jordan Thomas at the helm, is returning to the first game's setting as the sequel's primary location. If you recall, Thomas is responsible for BioShock's Fort Frolic section, and in little under an hour, he managed to share with the large group of games press I was part of some details on BioShock 2's direction, all the while hinting at the surprises to come. Here's a bit of what I learned.
Welcome to Rapture, Again
It's been 10 years since the happenings of the first game, with its protagonist Jack presumed dead from a debilitating ailment or death-by-splicer-takeover, depending on which ending you earned. The way BioShock 2 will reconcile the two endings is actually quite clever. With Rapture free from Andrew Ryan's splicer puppeteering and Frank Fontaine's "kindly" cajoling, Rapture's surviving residents actually start to mythologize the past, developing two at-odds theories as to what really happened, the results of which should be apparent in the new environments and dialogue alike.
You must login or register to view this content.
Given a decade of shooting up addictive Adam, those remaining splicers from the first game have now evolved, or should I say devolved, into even more creature-like beings. At the end of the first game, it was revealed that intense use of Adam causes you to grow physically dependant on the chemical -- an addiction so intense that the body simply can no longer live without it. These long-time splicers are adapting to their dependency, turning feral, gaining elongated limbs, and displaying extreme agility.
And while BioShock 2 will take place in the same city as the first game, that isn't to say we won't see any new locations. According to Thomas, the sections of Rapture we've seen to date have only been a very small "slice" of what the underwater city has to offer (thanks to the player's very direct goals). After all, this secret society was supposedly built with thousands of specially tapped brilliant minds, and the structure would need to be able to house them all. One such new location will be Fontaine Futuristics, the place where all of Rapture's biotech comes from, plasmids included. When asked about the state of the city's overall decay (all of what we saw in the first game was in ruins), Thomas remarks that though he can't go into specifics, players may return to locations from BioShock that are now submerged in water, while yet unseen sections of Rapture may be comprised of untouched pockets.
You'll also encounter a lot more than just splicers this time around. According to Thomas, BioShock 2 will have players interacting more directly with non-spliced humans, who are crucial to the storyline in some fashion.
But while many things may have changed, others remain eerily the same. Someone's managed to start the cycle all over again, with an influx of newly turned Little Sisters padfooting it about Rapture finding "Angels" from which to harvest precious Adam. And with the appearance of Little Sisters come yet another batch of newly initiated splicers, all craving that next hit. So BioShock 2 will have all those same old splicers you came to love in the first game. (I never thought I'd call these splicers "normal" but they're the normal ones.)
You must login or register to view this content.
Original Gangster
Wherever there's a Little Sister, a Big Daddy is sure to be found. That is, unless a pack of splicers managed to gang up on it and take it out. They'll have to use pack tactics to do that, which is exactly how the Adam junkies will try to deal with you, because, you see, in BioShock 2, you play as the original Big Daddy. As an early prototype model, your suit is lighter, making you more agile than the Big Daddy types you see in active duty. And unlike your stint in the suit toward the end of the first game, this time you can actually use Big Daddy-type weapons -- and even dual wield them -- like the drill and rivet gun, along with a few surprises. (You also feel much more like a real Big Daddy -- jumping down from a high ledge produces a satisfyingly weighty sound.) For use of those weapons, however, you must trade away your free will...at least, that's how it's supposed to work. The short demo Thomas showed had the player waking up to Tenenbaum's voice on the audio device telling you to wake up. Apparently someone has gone through the trouble of severing the brainwashing connection to Rapture's mind-controlling system, letting the player become the only Big Daddy with free will.
With your newfound freethinking ways, you can make your way through Rapture, backtracking through your past in order to chase down your former humanity. And unlike the "non-defective" golems, you're free to also upgrade your weapons and skills any way you see fit, including the option to use Adam for plasmid powers. According to Thomas, "We've taken away no [plasmid] functionality...whatever your favorites were, they have indeed extended." Take the cyclone and fire plasmid powers from the original game for example. When enough points have been put into them, you'll be able to lay down cyclones on the floor and then add fire to them to create spinning, fiery traps for unsuspecting splicers.
As a Big Daddy, you'll also have the ability to use heavy weapons such as the rivet gun (think: a giant's pistol equivalent) and drill (a powerful melee weapon you can rev up to do damage, though it does have an overheating meter you need to watch). You can put points into upgrading these weapons as well so you can get skills like the currently named "Daddy Dash" where you lunge forward with the drill extended in front of you for a quick and powerful jab.
If you're the type to love BioShock's hacking minigame, and you had tons of spy bots and turrets working on your side, then you'll be delighted to know that as a Big Daddy you'll also have the ability to invest points in this area, allowing you to do things such as healing your bots, or, as Thomas says "essentially being a pet master type of character."
You must login or register to view this content.
Under the Sea
"In BioShock, the ocean was very much a character too," says Thomas. For BioShock 2, rather than keep the watery depths at a distance, as something pretty and moody to gaze upon beyond glass, 2K Marin has opened up the ocean floor surrounding Rapture to the player. Exploring the ocean takes place on a pretty limited scale in that it isn't "open world." As with the rest of BioShock, everything is carefully designed. But going into the water does afford you a few advantages. You can't use any weapons under water, and the wonderfully suited music really lends itself to that calm, exploratory mood, giving you a breather between smashing up those splicer hordes. You also can find audio diaries, pick up loose Adam slugs, and pocket any useful debris. Walking around outside Rapture's glass windows also lets you peer in from a different perspective, one a splicer or regular human wouldn't be able to experience. The tactical advantage, of course, is that you can now look into certain rooms and alter your plan of attack based on what types of enemies you see in there.
Little Sister All Grown Up
And now we come to it: The Big Sister. Her existence seems to be a somewhat divisive subject amongst fans of the first game. On the one hand, it may seem as though this is a cheap way to come up with a nemesis for a Big Daddy. On the other, it's a pretty compelling story point: After the events from the first game, Tenenbaum took up a group of rescued Little Sisters to the surface, setting them free, and most moved on to lead normal lives. All except one. For whatever reason, she couldn't leave Rapture alone, so after she grows up, she finds a way to return. And as you can see from the teaser trailer released last year, she displays some special powers as well.
To be honest, I wasn't too fond of the Big Sister character design myself until I saw it in motion. Her long legs and skinny armor make a lot more sense when you see her leaping from a balcony and landing in a crouch on top of a statue, or practically skating across a large glass window. Her long needle-like attachment on her arm lets her harvest Adam from splicers much like the Little Sisters do, albeit brutally.
You must login or register to view this content.
Since you're a Big Daddy, whenever you encounter a Little Sister in the game, you can choose to either betray her inherent trust of the Big Dadddy father figure by harvesting her for Adam, or you can Adopt her, putting her up on your shoulders. If you choose to Adopt, the Little Sister will be able to point out prime Adam-filed splicer corpses. Set her down next to the body, and she'll start collecting it for you. However, this draws out all nearby splicers, creating a sort of arena-style encounter, with you having to defend the Little Sister against the onslaught until her work is done.
And as it turns out, this Big Sister has been going up to the surface and kidnapping girls from the Atlantic coast and turning them into Rapture's new Little Sisters, so, understandably, she's a bit protective of them. She can sense that you're no longer under mind-control and whenever you interact enough with a Little Sister by either Adopting or Harvesting them a set amount (if you recall, after three rescues in the first game, you'd receive an Adam-filled bear present), Big Sister will get angry and hunt you down wherever you are in the level.
Here's the kicker: you can beat her. In fact, doing so will award you with a special reward of some kind. It would seem disingenuous for such a strictly directed experience to let you kill off the game's main villain at any time in the game...except she isn't the main bad guy. Someone else is pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Speculations Abound
Like me, you undoubtedly have more questions. It would seem that these small first details are just enough to get the curiosity wheels turning. And while I pray BioShock 2's twist ending, if there is to be a twist ending, remains a secret until I can take my first journey through this narrative-driven sequel, I'm anxious to find out more about Rapture 10-years later, and all the new characters we can expect to find there. When asked about the good-guy-who-is-a-bad-guy template, Thomas dodges the question, saying he wants you to mistrust everyone. He does, however, mention that your "long term decisions do play into the ending," and that you'll be able "to see it coming." He continues, "This time around the decisions centered around Little Sisters have a Little Sister-centric component of the ending. Meanwhile, the decisions you make on the adult characters, the more grey characters, who may tempt you in different ways, affect the ending on a more adult axis." Does this mean BioShock 2 will have modal endings? I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
On a lark, I asked Thomas about the stunning blue butterfly at the end of the Sea of Dreams teaser trailer. He sing-songingly teases: "Can't tell you!" Will it be the "grand unifying theory," with its solitary emergence from the once submerged barnacle a signifier of what's to come, or is it merely a red herring? More sinister yet, is the butterfly the game's ultimate boss villain? After all, no one ever suspects the butterfly...
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