Ken Levine, among many other achievements the creator of System Shock 2, is in front of me leaping around and stabbing imaginary corpses with imaginary syringes. I meanwhile, nod and take notes. He is, of course, demonstrating the finer points of Bioshock's AI system - aping the gesticulations of his terrifying stem cell harvesting pre-teens with worrying aplomb.
However, coming from the man who's worked on outstanding games like Thief, Freedom Force, Tribes: Vengeance, SWAT 4 and of course, System Shock 2, this eccentric behaviour is acceptable. And with the System Shock 2 licence dissected into a squillion pieces and scattered across the globe like glittery fragments of the dreams of sci-fi nerds everywhere, we're quite prepared to engrave Ken Levine's name into our foreheads - or at least write it in pen all down one arm - for deciding to create Bioshock, the spiritual successor to the classic first-person RPG.
In the darkened conference room in Boston, in front of a massive HDTV displaying Bioshock's pause menu, Ken Levine, Irrational Games' lead designer, composes himself and takes a seat. "The focus is to create a world that we draw the player into as deeply as possible," he begins, "even deeper than in System Shock 2. What we're trying to do primarily is put the choice and the power in the player's hands and give him, in the classic Spider-Man sense, that great power and that great responsibility.
"The main burden of that in a game like Bioshock is building a world that's believable for the gamer, that feels like a real place, and that doesn't feel like a ride at Disneyworld with pop-up ghosts. We want Rapture to feel like a place that they can explore and have react to them in a believable fashion."
Already Rapture, the city in which Bioshock is set, is beginning to sound enticing, and squinting at the menu screen reveals the vague outline of neon signs and tiled floors in the background. I shift about in my seat a bit and start to worry that I may need a pee. Levine continues: "The world we're talking about is an underwater failed utopia. When you start the game, you wake up in the middle of the ocean underwater. We haven't told the player anything, the same way as when you woke up this morning there was no extensive cut-scene which told you who you are or what you're doing.
"You swim to the surface, you see debris sinking past you and realise you've been in some kind of plane crash. When you come to the surface of the ocean, and this is all interactive, the very surface of the water is on fire and there are suitcases and luggage scattered all over. You see this strange structure, almost like a lighthouse sitting in the middle of the ocean. You swim to it, and inside this lighthouse is a sort of art-deco bathysphere, a big globe device that's designed to bring people under the ocean, like a mini-submarine. So you get in this device and it brings you down to the bottom of the ocean, and as you're descending through the water you see the city of Rapture."
CHECK UNDER THE SEA The more Levine speaks, the more questions he creates. Rapture is, as he said, an underwater failed utopia, built by an ex-soviet named Andrew Ryan in 1946 for the world's cultural elite, the best and the brightest of humanity - artists, painters, scientists, athletes. "Ryan wants to create a society where the best people can do their best work unconstrained by government, unconstrained by religions, unconstrained by, as he puts it, bullshit notions of altruism," continues Levine.
"Unlike what you might see in a movie like The Abyss, they're not going to build a little space station underwater, f*** that. They're going to build a utopian, unbelievably gorgeous city utilising the finest architectural techniques of the time, and it's not going to be steel and steam, it's going to be wood and marble. And under the ocean? Well f*** the ocean, that's their attitude."
Of course, a bunch of smart blokes in a bubble does not a good game make, so in typical fashion everything falls to pieces when a stem cell-generating sea slug dubbed 'Adam' is discovered by a man named Fontaine. With the ability to modify bodies to become thinner, better looking, smarter or faster, Adam quickly becomes the currency of Rapture. Fontaine upsets the delicate balance of power in the capitalist society - the player arrives in the early '60s, to find the place ruined.
"This conflict develops between these two very powerful men and eventually it tears Rapture apart," explains Levine, "but not before people start using Adam to change their biology as the conflict becomes more physical and violent. People start enhancing themselves to engage in this conflict. You come down after this war has happened. Much like System Shock 2, part of the experience of Bioshock is learning about what happened in Rapture, putting the pieces together."
GUN FUN Finally, Levine turns to the mammoth screen and begins to show us exactly what the bizarre storyline has culminated in. As the pause menu disappears, a first-person view of a small, dark street fades into view. First impressions are great, and even though it's very early code on display, Bioshock is looking fantastic, a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3 rendering the art deco surroundings in beautiful detail.
"The weapons are cobbled together with household items," explains Levine, pointing at the odd-looking pistol on-screen. "The ammo feed is made from a tomato tin and there's a model airplane engine to power the automatic chamber. Weapons are modifiable too - the weapons system alone is more complex and deeper than in any other FPS."
It makes sense too - you wouldn't find conventional weaponry in an isolated utopian society. As Levine presses onwards he comes across a rotating machine-gun turret made using a gun and an office chair. Little touches like this attempt to flesh out the world Irrational are so keen to convey in Bioshock, and it seems to work.
MR & MRS ANGRY Apart from mechanical furniture, what kind of enemies can we expect to encounter in Rapture? "One of the most traditional enemies in Rapture are the Aggressors," explains Levine. "These are people in the world who've mutated, they've taken on mutations just to survive and had to change their bodies a lot. The interesting thing about them is they're not necessarily thrilled to be these hideous creatures - they're aware of what they are. You see these guys, men and women in period clothing, who've taken these drugs to change their bodies but their faces have changed horribly."
THE OPPOSITION Various pieces of artwork are placed on the conference room table. A woman in a green dress with a mane of red hair, wearing a mask and wielding two hooks, for instance. "The real violence in Rapture started in 1959, on New Year's Eve," states Levine. "Some people use a party mask to cover their faces because they're aware of what they look like now." Creepy, but it gets creepier.
"Any of these guys can use any of the weapons in the game. This woman, she's now equipped to be what we call a 'ceiling crawler'. That's a class of creature that can jump up to the ceiling and climb all over it to attack the player." Bioshock's answer to the Midwives from System Shock 2? We can only hope.
Later in the day, I spot a whiteboard in Levine's office with various phrases hastily jotted down. Things like, 'What have I done?! What have I done?!' and 'I don't remember my name'. None of which might be pant-shittingly terrifying when scrawled on a whiteboard in chunky blue marker, but if you've played System Shock 2, you know how a few sound samples can turn a regular enemy into something far more fundamentally disturbing. Bioshock will carry this same sort of atmosphere, with traumatised and deluded civilians screaming about everyday things such as their eternal, everlasting pain.
Where the game really gets interesting however is with the inclusion of great, hulking beasts called Protectors, and more importantly the very thing they protect - small (and inherently scary) children called Gatherers. "We wanted to have intelligences in the world who weren't necessarily your enemies but maybe gave you some interesting moral choices," muses Levine. "We thought it would be cool to have creatures going about and doing their business. Not like civilians in GTA where you can pretty much ignore them, but creatures which had something you really needed. We came up with the notion of the Protector and the Gatherer."
TO PROTECT AND SERVE "In Rapture, the only way to get Adam is to recycle it from dead bodies," continues Levine. "What's more, the only ones who can do this are the Gatherers. You'll see the big Protector and the little girl walking around, and they don't bother you if you don't bother them. The little girl carries this long syringe device, and there are bodies scattered throughout the world.
"We don't script this either. She'll wander around and find a dead body, before calling to her Protector to follow her. Then she'll kneel down, put this syringe in the body and extract the Adam. The only way she can process and recycle this Adam is through her own body, so she drinks the stuff, and you can watch all this happening. As you play, you learn about how these kids came about and how they were exploited."
Clearly, Rapture isn't a nice place, but it does pose some interesting moral decisions, as Levine confirms. "You now have a choice to make in the world. There are people who encourage you and reward you for getting through the game without ever harmfully interacting with the Gatherers - as I said, if you don't bother them they don't bother you. And let me tell you, the Protectors they're with? They're tough cookies. They're some of the toughest monsters in the game. But the reward for taking the Adam from the Gatherers is quite high - it means a lot of resources for you. So we're going to give you a real moral choice to make - is this something you're willing to participate in?"
BLAM! Indeed, the idea of blasting a hole in a child's face, even a virtual child's face, to retrieve their stem cells and upgrade your body is slightly unnerving. I shift in my seat again, but for different reasons this time. There aren't many games which place these kinds of decisions in the hands of the person at the keyboard, even fewer which make those decisions so central to the gameplay.
It's not just a matter of whether or not to kill a child though - there are a few alternative ways of acquiring the precious Adam. Without a Protector, a Gatherer will attempt to run away, but corner one and threaten her and she'll give you some Adam. Similarly, you can befriend a Gatherer and receive even more Adam. Of course, if you want all the Adam, you need to put your child-murdering hat on and go hunting.
"The important thing about AI to me", continues Levine, "is not that monsters are performing cool tactics. Rather, that they're creating a believable world in which people are motivated by meaningful things and allowing you to observe these behaviours, and most importantly have the ability to interact with the behaviours. We want a world where there's an actual ecology going on. We want a relationship between all the different players in the world including you. And more importantly, we want ways for you to interact with that ecology, have an impact on that ecology and be affected by it in ways you can plan and ways you can't."
And that's precisely where Bioshock differs from System Shock 2. With open-ended areas and a compelling world, a rich back-story waiting to be told and the sort of emergent gameplay mentality you find in sandbox games such as Oblivion (with a first-person RPG you just knew that reference was coming), Bioshock will be something very special indeed. It's a game that, in everything but name, we've been praying might happen for a long time - and a game that will 'spiritually' give the System Shock series the full recognition it deserves.
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