BioShock Infinite will put the ‘mystery’ back into the game franchise, according to lead designer Ken Levine. Responding to questions at Gamescom about why Irrational Games had shifted the game into the skies rather than the undersea world of Rapture, Levine said that he thought the mystery element of the series had proven difficult to maintain in the second game, as players already knew what Rapture was.
“When BioShock 1 came out people were like, ‘what? What am I seeing here? What is this?’,” said Levine, “By BioShock 2 naturally that was a very difficult thing to maintain… you’re back in Rapture, you’re back in that setting”
The need for mystery was one of the factors that influenced the decision to set Bioshock Infinite in a completely different environment. “For us BioShock was never about the setting, it was about a couple of gameplay principles – the idea of being in an environment that’s strange and weird, ridiculously and over the top but still grounded in a human experience and humanity.”
The mystery that has been niggling at us – and many gamers – is exactly what makes this a BioShock game. The setting is different and Infinite seems to be set in an alternate history that has nothing to do with the Objectivist-inspired setting of the original. Levine didn’t reveal much, but did drop a couple of tantalising hints – “We kind of knew people would be thrown out of the loop when we announced this game. That’s what we wanted, even on a meta-level. ‘What? It’s a sequel, but it’s not?”
There were, he added, “very clear reasons” why the game has both ‘BioShock’ in the title and ‘Infinite’ and that all would become “clearer and clearer over time.” Intriguing.
TBC | £tbc | Bioshock Infinite ( via CVG)
