Topic: The Official BioShock thread.

[JacksRag(e)]

I think chameleon could be that one plasmid that makes you invisible to the enemy until you start attacking.

[Pugnate]

It's funny how everyone has different opinions.  I used telekinesis more than anything, I think.

I swear I made a post replying to this. Anyway I too use telekinesis a lot, like it were the gravity gun in HL2.

[Cobra951]

I think chameleon could be that one plasmid that makes you invisible to the enemy until you start attacking.

That's the one.  I used it a lot too, if I had room for it.  But I was thinking attack plasmids.

[gpw11]

I always have it equipped but haven't really found it all that useful. Generally I'm walking around when I encounter enemies, so that kind of negates the potential.

WindSpring or whatever can make for some hilarious moments though.

[scottws]

I don't even remember chameleon.  You can tell how much I used it.

I used the electroshock by far the most.  Plus the ice one and the fire one.

[gpw11]

I just finished it.  Awesome game.

(click to show/hide)

I got the good ending, which was alright but a little abrupt.  I also just watched the bad ending on Youtube, which was pretty weak.  Considering the detail they went into with all the back story in the game I was kind of expecting more really.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, I think everyone wanted just a bit more from the endings.  Still, I was pretty satisfied all in all (got the good ending).

[Cobra951]

I think even Levine admitted that the wrap-up was weak.  There's a way to beat the final boss with hardly a scratch too, which was sort of a disappointment when I stumbled on it.  (Remember I played through this game about 10 times.)

(click to show/hide)

Ramp up on electric damage to make this even easier.  Requirement: one chem spreader fully loaded with electric gel.  In between each stab with the adam needle, shoot the guy with the gel until he runs back to recharge.  At that point, recharge the chem weapon as you run up to him to stab him again.  He's completely paralyzed by the gel.  The only damage you get comes from the minor minions buzzing around, and that's nothing to concern yourself with at this point, even on Hard mode.

[Quemaqua]

Heh, never thought of that.

Also, I'd written a review I forgot all about.  I'll post it sometime soon just because... well, I wrote it and may as well post it even though nobody cares.

[MysterD]

Damn, Cobra...and I had a HELL of a time trying to beat that final boss, when I did! 

[MysterD]

Levine speaks about Bioshock w/ 1Up, post Spike TV Awards.

Oh, and Ken gives his speech he would've gave, if GameCock didn't cockblock him from giving his speech.

Ken Levine Talks BioShock
The VGA acceptance speech we didn't hear and more!
By Garnett Lee, 12/21/2007

As Sam commented on, an ill-conceived publicity stunt by GameCock (for which they did apologize) at the Spike VGA's threw the show off and left Ken Levine without a chance to say anything as he accepted the award for Game of the Year given to BioShock. While he's off enjoying some well-deserved vacation time, he took a few minutes out to give us his acceptance speech and answer a few questions looking back at BioShock.

1UP: It's been a good amount of time now since BioShock's release. Two million copies sold and heaps of awards are proof-positive people loved the game. Looking back, what do you consider BioShock's greatest weakness, and what might you have done differently?

Ken Levine: In short, I underestimated how much people would care about the story. The 3rd act of the game is the weakest part. I just never realized how much people were going to invest in the climactic Andrew Ryan scene, and I think the remainder of the game can not equal that.

I liked the third act, though. Basically, it....

(click to show/hide)

took you on a revenge path to go after Fontaine. I think after the Andrew Ryan incident, that was all I was looking for.

Oh, and becoming a Big Daddy was pretty cool!

But the endings could've been fleshed out; could've been longer.

Still, a great game and great story.

1UP: The moral choice presented with the Little Sisters forced people to pick a side pretty early on -- but still have a chance to change. When you play BioShock, how do you approach the dilemma of whether to save or harvest the girls?

KL: a total wimp. I (outside of testing) have never harvested. My favorite story comes from a journalist whose fiancée caught him harvesting. He apparently had to spend a night or two sleeping on the couch.

ROFL!

1UP: Tell us something we may not know about BioShock or its development.

KL: The twist

(click to show/hide)

about the player's identity

came fairly late in development. I'm way more focused on gameplay early on than I am on the story. Most of the best BioShock story stuff came in the final months.

Interesting.

1UP: If 2K Marin is working on BioShock 2, what's going on at 2K Boston...development on another new IP?

KL: Sorry, can't comment on rumors or speculation.

Hmmmm....
I still do wonder what's up w/ the split b/t 2K Marin and Boston....

1UP: Going forward, what are going to be the biggest challenges to continuing the franchise with a BioShock sequel?

KL: The first game set a pretty high bar. Sequels are always going to be a challenge because expectations are way up there.

1UP: The Northeast ain't exactly the hotbed of game development. Where are you finding your talent?

KL: Having a hit game makes recruitment a lot easier. I remember the early days of recruiting on System Shock 2, we'd get some pretty depressing resumes. But we're extremely selective. It took us ten years to build the team that made BioShock.

Interesting.

1UP: Which game are you most looking forward to playing in 2008, and what was your GOTY for 2007?

KL: I may disappoint some people with this, but the game I'm looking forward to in 2008 is Smash Bros. Now that I finally managed to crack my way into Outland, I'm now psyched for the next WOW expansion. In terms of Best of '07; that's a tough one.

My friend Andrew Mayer, who's also a game designer, said that '07 was kind of like 1939 in Hollywood, when the nominees included Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and a bunch of other all-time classics. So, I'm gonna stay away from the traditional favorites here and go with J'eanne D'Arc on the PSP. That said, Portal was amazing, as was Rock Band, Galaxy and too many others to mention. What an insanely great year.

Portal ruled -- agreed.
I wish there was more content to it, though.

1UP: During E3, we caught you walking the streets of Santa Monica reading comic books-so we figure you're at least something of a fan. If you could turn any comic book into a videogame, which one would it be and how would you do it?

KL: I'd love to make a tactical RPG out of last summer's Marvel Civil War. I totally fanboi'd out on that one.

Heh!

1UP: What was going through your head during the Gamecock incident at the VGAs? Since the incident, Gamecock has publicly apologized, but still, that must've been a bummer for you and your team.

KL: All I really gave a crap about was that the judges (who were all top journalists) chose us from the field. The rest is kind of gravy.

1UP: Still, it must have been a pretty exciting moment. What were you hoping to have a chance to say?

KL: I had a tireless, amazing team who was on a mission to make BioShock great. We didn't have 300 people or five years. We had an insane amount of passion. I'd like to thank the people who made it with me, the families that patiently waited while we did our thing, the publisher with the guts not to make us change it, and the fans who showed that gamers have a much broader range of interest and intellect than anybody in certain parts of the media or the political space is comfortable giving them credit for.

*sarcasm*
Thanks for interrupting *that* speech, GameCock....

1UP: Grilling aside, what're your plans for the holidays?

KL: More Galaxy, more Rock Band, cracking open my newly arrived signed copy of Mass Effect (Thanks Ray and Greg!), more WOW, more Uncharted, more Call of Duty, more sleep.

Cool.

[PyroMenace]

Well when I started playing it earlier I got hooked again. I restarted and I'm already almost back to where I left off.

[Quemaqua]

Good stuff.  It's definitely one of those games that's worth seeing to the end for the cool moments that really make it special.

Nice interview, too.  Always good see Jeanne d'Arc get some love.  Probably the best purchase I've yet made for my PSP, frankly.

[gpw11]

Who the fuck is Gamecock?

[Pugnate]

I just assumed it was you.

[MysterD]

Who the fuck is Gamecock?

A bunch of dicks who got in Levine's way when he was about to make his acceptance speech.

[Quemaqua]

They're a game studio.

[MysterD]

They're a game studio.

Umm....WTF?

Then they have even more right of a right to not disrespect Mr. Levine.

If Gamecock even wins an award, I hope Levine interrupts their speech, dressed as a Big Daddy and....
(leaves the rest to your violent imagination)

[MysterD]

Interview from GamePro w/ Levine.

GamePro: You already made a few references to these earlier versions of BioShock and I find it really interesting just because - and I think a lot of people do to - the game as it is, is so polished. The word I have heard, and it is used a lot, is BioShock has fine craftsmanship- and that is not something you hear very often about video games. This begs this sort of intrigue about the development process of the game. I have read a few other interviews where you spoke on the earlier versions of the game. I have heard at one point, and I don't know if this came up in an interview with you or if you had said this specifically, but there was one story that it was originally involving Nazis and they there was this other one that you were this D-programmer; so what is the real story there, are all they true? And how did the game end up evolving into its current state?

Ken Levine: They are all true. We went through a lot of different stages on the story. Much to the chagrin of everyone around me they happened fairly late in development process, but I think that was because I was waiting for the game to tell me what the story was. I didn't go in there with a story axe to grind; like I needed to tell a story and didn't care what the game was. The game comes first for me, and it wasn't really until mid 2005 when the World of Rapture started to speak to me and I started to understand what it was... and then I had to convince everybody else.

I don't blame anybody for having doubts because it is not something that tricks off the tongue in terms of a place for a video game to take place. I Sort of had to sell it to myself first, then sell it internally, then to 2K and then sell it to the public. Each step of the way got a little easier because I had support of the people. Once I sold it to the team and they bought into it, my life got a lot easier. Amazing artists, animators, and designers built out this world. The vision I had in my head just got taken over by amazing games that these guys are creating everyday.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. There was a point in development where the design team wanted to cut the Big Daddies out of the game, but Levine wasn't having that.

KL: That said, I think you never know for sure whether it is going to work. I have told this story before but I remember when we were working on Shock 2 and the head of Looking Glass asked me, "So, is this game going to be scary?" I honestly didn't know., and it was the same with BioShock. I am doing all the things and turning the gears in all the right directions to make that happen... pressing the right buttons to make that happen, I think, but that is just my gut. At the end of the day, who knows if it is going to be scary; who knows if it is going to be fun. You just have to have an internal sensor for that and that sensor may be unreliable. Even the best directors and writers screw up. I have screwed up. The danger of that is sometimes you start doubting yourself, and let me tell you there are a million things that people blabbered on BioShock all along the way, that if I got panicked over, I would have done something stupid like there is a fairly large movement within the company to cut the Big Daddies at one point.

GP: Wow! Of all the things. That is very interesting. What was the concern?

KL: I guess it didn't work, like we couldn't get them to work properly. It was really complicated and you have to use your gut. Quite often we cut things out that were very smart to cut. In another universe the Big Daddies may have been smart to cut, but I had an attachment to them... maybe even an irrational attachment to them. I was in a position where I could say "No, we are not cutting this," though just because I run the company that doesn't mean I can do whatever I want. At the end of the day there are really talented guys and they can go wherever they want to go and do whatever the hell they want to do. I have to make sure they believe in me and what I am doing in the project. So you have to listen very carefully and sometimes people are right and sometimes people are wrong. I think the difference between a good game developer and a bad game developer is to know when to hold them and know when to fold them.

I dunno what Bioshock would've been like, w/out the Big Daddies. I mean, they were such a big part of the game, in the story and in the actual gameplay...

GP: This sounds really open-ended, but in a nutshell what do you think game designers are doing right, and what do you think they are doing wrong?

KL: In a nutshell they are giving gamers more freedom and they are not spoon-feeding them their stories with walkthroughs. They are opening things up for the gamer and that is the future of games; it is freedom. I think what we are doing is a lot more right, than what we've been wrong

Interesting. Yes, freedom can be a good thing; very good thing, when done right. I dunno', but it depends on the game, really. Elder Scrolls games were amazing b/c they know how to make the game so open-ended and keep you wanting to keep at the actual game. The game was great. The story was good, but yeah -- it's obviously no Witcher or PS:T, when it comes to story and game characters.

On another hand, The Witcher was great b/c it had the best of all worlds -- some freedom to do what you want here, some decisions that you will have to make there, and then there was some linearity to the game itself. And yes, that's probably why the story's so focused and so strong -- b/c you could only be one character (Geralt), like it or not. They obviously saw what made PS:T so great, if you ask me.

[Cobra951]

We've been through this argument before.  Freedom is always a good thing.  It is never a bad thing.  (Redundance for emphasis.)  Freedom trumps story any day, and I hope that eventually games allow you the freedom to direct the story in the same fluid way that you can traverse terrain in an action RPG.

[Quemaqua]

Personally, I think a good mix makes for the most compelling games.  That's one of the big reasons that Final Fantasy XII has been so amazing for me.  While not as big or open as an Elder Scrolls game, it's pretty unrestrictive in allowing you to try for a number of different goals at most points, and the game seems extremely well balanced in terms of having static enemy levels and such yet still giving you lots of different areas where combat remains interesting.  Add in being able to unlock new purchases by turning in various combinations of loot, finding rare monsters (tons of these), doing the side-quest boss fights (tons of these), trying to get drops and steal/poach specific items out of different enemies to unlock more stuff, plus find all the hidden bosses and optional content, you've got a pretty amazing amount of freedom compared to other JRPGs.  But you've also got a tight story with great characters, fantastic writing, etc., and no matter how fun and interesting the other stuff is, the characters and story are absolutely why I'm still playing this game after 105 hours.  Morrowind and Oblivion both stole hundreds of hours of my life away too, and I love the fiction and backstory more than most, but there are many ways that FFXII branded itself upon me that TES games have never come close to doing, and a big part of that is the story.  The extra freedom in TES games makes up for it, but the fact remains that the thin story elements are still a negative.  Too, I don't think we can do much better than The Witcher in terms of story freedom.  Too much is a bad thing and leads to a sense of contrivance, though having your actions affect the way things turn out is definitely neat.  I wish you could play that one so we could get your thoughts on it.

[Cobra951]

I really have to track down FF XII and my PS2's composite cable (hopefully in the PS2 box).  The Witcher I think would take more new hardware than I can handle right now.

[MysterD]

I really have to track down FF XII and my PS2's composite cable (hopefully in the PS2 box).  The Witcher I think would take more new hardware than I can handle right now.

Well, CDProjekt RED has job listings for wanting X360 programmers...
...So, maybe the X360 will see a Witcher port?

[TheOtherBelmont]

Well I finally got around to getting to play this game, my friend let me borrow his 360 while he was out of town and I just beat  Bioshock.  Awesome game, I will definitely be playing through it again when I get the PC version so I can see if there is a different ending for harvesting the little sisters instead of rescuing them and possibly playing through it on Hard.  I got the Little Sister savior ending and even got the achievement for saving all the little sisters in the game.

[Quemaqua]

I think most people go that route initially.  I tried to go back and do the other way, and honestly, I couldn't stomach it.  I did it a couple times and it *hurt*.  I gave up trying to do any more.  Though I think if you harvest even one you get the other ending.

[MysterD]

Guys, take this as a rumor. Not been confirmed yet.

Rumor has it that 2K Marin is working on The Bioshock Prequel set for sometime around 2009 -- yes, and they're doing it without Ken Levine.
 

BioShock Prequel in the Works?
By Tom Ivan    Print   |   Send to a friend   |   Email the editor

BLOG - Rumors indicate that the follow-up to one of last year’s top games, BioShock, will be a prequel focusing on the fall of the original game’s setting, the atmospheric and beautifully detailed underwater city Rapture.

According to internet murmurings, a BioShock follow-up is currently in pre-production and set for a 2009 release, backing up Take-Two’s previous comments that the title could develop into a franchise that sees a new release every two years.

Graphic design and plot are reportedly 2K’s primary focuses at the moment, and the story will likely be set before the events that took place in the original game, telling of how Rapture, a 1940s underwater utopian society, fell prey to greed and vice.

Another rumor based around Take-Two job postings suggests the title will primarily be developed at the publisher’s recently formed 2K Marin studio, while it has also been speculated that BioShock creator and director Ken Levine will not be involved in the project.
 
Levine spoke to Next-Gen last year about BioShock’s launch and the possibility of sequels.

Next-Gen's Blog is reserved for opinion pieces, quirky news stories and general news detritus. We welcome your comments on this article.

[gpw11]

ehhhh....this is a very story-driven game and a prequel isn't really what I'm interested in.  I can see where they're coming from, but I think the most interesting thing about Bioshock was hearing about the city and it's downfall.  That's the thing - I already totally know where this is going. 

[MysterD]

Levine made a comment that game plots need to be really "fucking stupid" and he explained why he said such a thing.

Ken Levine Clears up the F****d up Story Thing
Apr 03, 2008 at 12:46 AM - Robert "Apache" Howarth - 36 Comments

2K Boston's Ken "She Looked 18 to Me" Levine sent in a clarification about his earlier comments regarding the plot has to be really f***ing stupid for people to keep up with it post. Here's the dirt:

    I did a presentation on this at GDC.

    I talked about how the very basic plot of your game has to be very, very simple so people who are not inclined to care about your story can follow it. In BioShock it’s

    Act 1: Get to the sub

    Act 2: Kill X

    Act 3: Kill Y [edited out the names in case you haven't played it yet]

    However, once people are attached to those primal threads, they can, IF THEY CHOOSE, go deeper. That’s where in BioShock all the other storytelling devices kick in: the diaries, the public service announcements, the posters, the thousands of little scenes in the world of Rapture that tell the story of what happened there. But I like to assume there’s going to be some part of the audience that doesn’t care about that, and those people can opt out of it. But for the people who do care, they can choose to opt in and get a fairly complex story (and a VERY complex story relative to other console first person shooters).

    However, it’s also a question of training the audience. Shock 2 sold 200k units. Deus Ex maybe sold a couple hundred thousand more than that. So there’s simply not a lot of people out there who have experience with narrative oriented shooters. The broad shooter audience is just not that accustomed to complicated story. However, I think BioShock (and other games this year such as Portal) demonstrates that audience is ready for more. Just like FPS added more gameplay elements over time (the move to full 3d, vehicles, objective based stuff like in Battlefield) the story telling space can become more complex as the audience gets comfortable receiving story in game rather than in pre- rendered cutscenes. In short, the next game we do can be more complex, and the one after that can be more complex still.

Storytelling in games has long been a sticking point around these parts.

[MysterD]

This is an interview from Gamasutra w/ Kev Levine of 2K Boston, in which he talks about the importance of narrative in gaming.

There are Bioshock SPOILERS in there, so if you ain't finished Bioshock yet, you might not wanna' read this just yet

[MysterD]

With my new video card installed this past weekend, I got myself back into finishing up my 2nd run through of Bioshock -- and been playing it all this past weekend and all this week.

Finished it tonite, got the good ending this time around.

After that, time for Bioshock to go. So, I used the Revoke Tool and revoked my current  "Activation" of the game successfully and then uninstalled the game.

Yay!

[MysterD]

Video interview w/ Ken Levine from GameSpot.

[MysterD]

For those who don't have Bioshock PC yet, Best Buy has Bioshock PC on sale this week for $19.99.

WARNING: Bioshock PC comes w/ Securom Internet Edition protection and has an install limit, but at least allows you to revoke an install and get installs back (so you can put it on another PC, in the future).

[MysterD]

INSTALL Limit removed completely from Bioshock PC.

Yes, you'll still need to activate the game and need the DVD to play -- but, now the game doesn't care about install counts any longer (b/c the count was kept server-side).

Activation limits removed on BioShock for the PC

Good news! As promised, all activation restrictions, including install limits, have been removed from BioShock PC as of today. You don’t have to patch or install anything for this to go into effect for your copy of BioShock – it’s already done!

Enjoy your time in Rapture, and thank you for supporting BioShock and the 2K teams.

...

Our other methods of copy protection remain. You will still have to activate your copy, and you will still need to keep the disc in the drive. SecuROM has not been removed -- just the activation limits on number of installs and number of computers you can install BioShock on simultaneously.

As I promised that the activation limits would go away, I can promise that if we ever stop supporting BioShock in the ways you speak of, we will release a patch so that the game is still playable. I believe, as you seem to, that BioShock will be the kind of game we will want to revisit 5, 10, 15 or more years from now. I want my copy to be playable, just as you do, and so does 2K.

[Xessive]

Cool coincidence! I just reinstalled the game yesterday! It was giving me a lot of trouble with the activation process though. Basically it wouldn't activate, preventing me from actually playing the game.

The 'auto-update' at the end of the installation is useless. It seemed to update but I think it actually did damage to the game exe (both times I reinstalled). I ended up having to break the auto-update and manually update to v1.1 via the full patch (I have a habit of storing patches on a backup drive). That got it working!

I personally think that auto-update at the end of the installation is a stupid idea. It doesn't even ask you if you'd like to update it just goes ahead and does it. Suppose I don't want to waste valuable time and bandwidth downloading something I already have?!

[idolminds]

I think the update during install isn't so much an update but its downloading the last files needed to run the game. Anti-piracy measure. That doesn't do anything but annoy me.

[MysterD]

I'd rather do the patch manually, myself. That way I can keep the file, in case I need to reinstall the file if needed AND burn the patch file to disc -- so I have the patch for the future and stuff -- in case no site seems to be hosting the file sometime down the road and I decide to reinstall the game.

What I normally do is w/ these games that have these game cases, especially ones w/ the pole where you can easily place multiple CD's on the pole, I'll just put my Game back-up discs w/ patch files, wallpapers, extra DLC content, or whatever else they release on that back-up disc and shove it right underneath the game CD. Or the other thing I'll often do is if there's not much room, I'll stuff a disc-paper sleeve w/ that back-up disc inside of the game case w/ the case.

Auto-updates w/out asking permissions I find are annoying -- like STEAM games do and some of these other new games do. I would like to be asked first, before the thing wants to force the update. B/c hell, maybe I want to do something else now and will want to do the update later -- especially if the connection is not too good b/c too much web-traffic trying to get this update or whatever. Or maybe the file is big and I'll just say, "Hell, I'll do it another time..."

[MysterD]

Bioshock's Lead Programmer, Chris Kline, spoke on why he think Bioshock should have failed.

Interesting stuff.

June 23, 2008

Paris GDC: 2K's Kline On Why BioShock Should Have Failed

Paris GDC: 2K's Kline On Why BioShock Should Have Failed At his Paris GDC session exploring the development of 2K's critical success BioShock, lead programmer Chris Kline started off by saying his main point would be that "BioShock should’ve failed."

"In fact," he continued, "it did fail a lot, over the course of time. A series of big mistakes and corrections and slipped ship dates, but all of these helped make it a good game.”

Initial Shock

In early 2002, realizing that the team needed to make a big budget title, then-Irrational Games decided: “Here was our idea: Let’s just make System Shock 2. This was easy because we’d already made System Shock 2. We knew it was a critical success, and we thought we knew all the things that kept it from being financially successful.”

“I said this was going to be about failure," said Kline, "and the very first failure was that we wanted to base this whole thing on System Shock 2.”

Irrational decided that the two main areas where the game needed to innovate were on narrative and AI -- specifically, an AI ecology that was not singularly focused on attacking the player -- but development abruptly stopped on the game at that point, for the next two years.

Wow, a 2 year break.
Crap, this game could've not even made it....

When they returned to the game, there was some concern about the fact that they were trying to sell to publishers a sequel to an unsuccessful game, so the developers "faked it," said Kline, by giving GameSpot an exclusive on the game alongside a planned System Shock 2 retrospective for its five year anniversary.

Interesting...

“The design team’s core assumption was that Shock 2 was a near-perfect game design. And we could just fix a few flaws. So what did we keep? Resource scarcity, the customization of the character through different systems, and we wanted the player to be cautious about moving through the world,” Kline explained.

All of the things that make SS2 great.

Ecologies and Evolutions

Irrational went for the concept of life existing around you but without you, but found that the AI ecology - why the enemies would fight each other - made no sense. “The world needs to revolve around the player,” Kline said.

“Another mistake we made on the art side was focusing too much on the monster models," he continued. "The real problem at this time was that we didn’t know what the main focus of the visuals was. What we now know is that it’s not the monsters, but the city of Rapture.”

He continued by saying in designing the 'gatherers' -- what would become the Little Sisters but began as designs as varied as insects, a frog with a bottle, and a dog in a wheelchair -- nobody was focusing on what the end user experience was, and everyone was moving in different directions.

Interesting.

That changed for the E3 2006 demo, where everyone had to pull together and really make it work. “In order to show we could create a compelling user experience, we had to change how we were thinking about the game. We had to start thinking about what the player was really going to feel in this game,” Kline said.

Shoot For Success

Following the demo, though, he said that while it was getting critical acclaim, it wasn't actually gaining much interest from users, so they changed marketing to say that it was a shooter – and then found they had to prove it.

“What’s interesting is that even though it was the same game," Kline said, "when we presented it as a shooter people started getting more excited about it. Even the team.”

More or less, Bioshock turned out to me more of a shooter than anything. I relied on that both times through, probably more so than the "magic" abilities/spells.

“We were actually so focused on the big details that we actually forgot how important the little details are,” he said, so they changed the game to make it more exciting, but still found that there was a lot they weren’t paying attention to.

The harvest or save mechanics weren't implemented yet, the money versus Adam mechanics, how to encourage plasmid use, balancing, framerate, even the script -- "There were a lot of problems," Kline sighed.

In the end, though, he confessed, “Some people think that constantly messing up, and pushing dates isn’t a good way to make a game, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the only way to make a good game.”

Developers need to doubt everything and listen to everyone, Kline concluded. “Always remember that you might be totally screwing everything up.”

[gpw11]

That was actually kind of interesting, but to be perfectly honest I think a large part of the game's mass success has to do with timing and the use of the new Unreal engine. Not to take away the  accomplishments of the developers (it's a great game in many aspects) but I think all the eye candy is what brought a lot of people in who otherwise wouldn't give a crap about anything to do with System Shock.

[MysterD]

That was actually kind of interesting, but to be perfectly honest I think a large part of the game's mass success has to do with timing and the use of the new Unreal engine. Not to take away the  accomplishments of the developers (it's a great game in many aspects) but I think all the eye candy is what brought a lot of people in who otherwise wouldn't give a crap about anything to do with System Shock.

That's definitely true -- it really showed what could be done w/ the Unreal 3 Engine technically. Not only that, but I think the Bioshock game was also artistically beautiful, as well -- that completed the graphics packaged, if you ask me.

I think what also helped bring gamers into this game was it a labeled as more so as a FPS than the hybrid SS2 was (FPS/RPG). Don't get me wrong, Bioshock still had the upgrading elements (Plasmids, Weapons, etc etc) often found in RPG's -- but not really to the extent that say SS2 had.

[MysterD]

Ken Levine speaks on some stuff
Ken Levine (of 2K Boston aka Irrational Games) speaks on some things -- that he's working on his new game and responds to the rumors about him being tough to work for.

BioShock Creator Talks New 'Crazy Ambitious' Game, Levine 'Not Substantially' Involved in BioShock 2
by Chris Faylor Jul 30, 2008 12:05pm CST tags: BioShock 2, 2K Boston, 2K Australia, Ken Levine

Irrational Games co-founder and BioShock creator Ken Levine today began teasing details of his next project, which is separate from the 2K Marin-developed BioShock 2.

"It's going to be pretty crazy ambitious," he told videogaming247, adding that project is "not in the blue-sky period any more" and that the studio is "actually building design elements and building it out."

"It's important to us that whatever we do has the same impact on the gamer that BioShock did. And so, I think that the company's position on us and what we do is that we're going to be breaking down barriers and breaking down doors."

Rumors have long circulated that a revival of the UFO-centric X-COM action-strategy series is being developed at 2K Boston and 2K Australia, a collective formerly known as Irrational Games.

As for BioShock 2, Levine stated that he was "not substantially" involved in the sequel. Publisher Take-Two had previously confirmed his participation, but offered no details on his role. "I'm doing my thing and making my game," he said.

However, he did touch on rumors that he was difficult to work with and that this had caused many 2K Boston staffers to transfer to 2K Marin.

"It's not something I can respond to, there's no point in it," he responded when videogaming247 broached the subject. "Look at the BioShock credit list and see how true that rumor is. My personality? I don't know. Maybe I am an asshole."

EDIT, 8/4/2008:
Levine says Bioshock saved the FPS-RPG genre
Here's Levine saying that Bioshock saved the deep-story FPS/RPG genre.

BioShock rescued shooters, says Levine
News by Rob Fahey

Today 09:36

2K's Ken Levine has told Eurogamer he reckons BioShock has rescued the shooter genre by opening up a brand new market.

"I can pretty much guarantee to you that if BioShock wasn't successful, there never would have been another game like this," Levine told us in an exclusive interview. "I don't even know how we convinced people to pay for BioShock. These games had never made any money - everybody told us when we were pitching BioShock, sounds like a great idea, you'll sell 150,000 units - next!"

Levine was responding to a question about the player response to BioShock - in particular, the criticism from some players that the game was less complex or challenging than they'd hoped. He doesn't agree with that assertion, and thinks hardcore fans of the genre should focus on the positives.

"Honestly, really deep down, we wanted to popularise this kind of gameplay that we've been attached to for so long," he explained. "If the first iteration of it was a tiny bit simpler than System Shock 2... Look, how many of these type of games do you think are going to be made now, compared to how many were going to be made before? It took us how many years to get this game green-lit?

"Now, future games, competitors' games, our games... We can build upon millions of people's knowledge of the genre. How many people had played these kind of games before? 300,000, 400,000 - maybe? Now millions of people, because of this game, have played this type of game."

Levine reckons this situation is similar to RTS games - arguably a relatively obscure genre which has become a bankable, solid performer thanks to a large audience familiar with its conventions and appeal.

"Go back and play Dune 2, and now look at them," he said. "They have build queues, all the complexity that you can have in games like Company of Heroes, with cover and stuff like that... It's because a system was popularised and people were willing to invest in it with confidence that there was going to be an audience.

"Before, as great as System Shock 2 and Deus Ex were, nobody bought them. We wanted to crack that. I think now, the sky's the limit for how deep these games can go."