Her eyes finally betray a small hint of fear. Throughout the last fight, as her bubble-boxed buddy slammed his drill bit into my face, she was jeering at me, laughing at my weakness. When I was hurled across the room, scattering furniture, she giggled and cheered. When my vision blurred, from taking unstoppable punch after punch, she clapped her hands. Now she's squirming.
She's a Little Sister. She's not quite human. She has the shape of a little girl, and she was once someone's daughter. But now she's a harvester - one of those who drive a syringe into the dead and extract their corrupted genes. Once she has the blood, she'll swallow it in one gulp, shuddering at the aftertaste.
Is she human? Her eyes say no: they glow bright yellow, demonic. But in my arms... maybe. Maybe she is human. Her Big Daddy is dead. She is defenceless. Her 'Mr Bubbles' minder is flat on his back. And so she writhes back and forth, her tiny arms pushing against my elbows, desperate to escape. She's scared. I have her by the scruff of the neck. She can't escape. She can only wait for my decision. Live or die?
The latter seems fair. My hands move swiftly. Her head is forced downward, oh-so sharp. She's pressed beneath my vision, just out of sight. There's a crack, a splinter, and then she reappears. Limp. In my left hand, her corpse. It is discarded, landing face down in a dank corner. In my right hand, the slithering, dripping slug I've just extracted from her broken spine. It's what I need. My trophy. I swallow it whole, slime still dripping off my hands. This is not a family game.
When you talk to Ken Levine, the creative mind behind the pulp first-person horror of BioShock, it's clear that you're dealing with one of the fiercest creative minds in gaming. He's enjoying the attention, enjoying the lavish praise being heaped on his game by an adoring press.
Ken began his videogame career working for legendary game developer Looking Glass. It was there he was taught the craft of game design, working on the story and initial ideas behind the Thief games. Then came System Shock 2, a masterpiece of horror. In Shock 2 an artificial intelligence-cum-demented mother figure named SHODAN turned slowly insane, alternately torturing and toying with you, the one surviving crew member of a ruined spacecraft. BioShock is regarded as a spiritual sequel to that game - only here you're the one surviving member of a plane crash, saved from death but plunged deep into the social collapse of a strange colony, Rapture. And it's in Rapture that you find Ken's first love.
"I'm fascinated by utopia," explains Ken. "Utopia, and what happens when it all falls apart. What will people do to create a utopia, and how will they protect it when it falls apart? It's that Logan's Run idea - where ideas are carried right through to their natural end-point." Playing the first two hours of BioShock, you can clearly see the thought processes behind its odd setting. Rapture is coherent and claustrophobic, radical yet weirdly real. This is not an abandoned space station, nor an alien-infested planet. It's human, and it's almost possible.
In BioShock's backstory, Rapture began as an invitation-only haven for the great and good. Scientists, artists and engineers from across the globe were coaxed into joining with the promise of unfettered resources and a place to pursue their ultimate dreams. It exists far below the surface of the Atlantic ocean, the only clue to its existence a lone lighthouse on a remote island. As you first descend, a recorded message by the colony's founder, Andrew Ryan, explains his vision to you: "I built a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the great would not be constrained by petty morality."
Your arrival in Rapture is accidental. The game begins with you finishing a cigarette, as the stewardess asks you to "stow your tray table, sir." Then a crash, a fire, and blackness. When you come to, the sea is on fire. To your left, the tail end of your aircraft, slowly sinking. To your right, beyond the smoke and charred corpses, a lighthouse. Inside, a rusting, decrepit bathysphere. The only option is simple videogame logic. "Use."
As you descend, all is blackness at first. But suddenly there is light, and you're given your first glimpse of Rapture. It towers above the sea floor. Every space is lit - either from the inside, or by bright neon advertising hoardings bolted into the available space. "With Adam, there's no need not to be beautiful!" screams one. "Come bite the apple in Eve's Garden!" whispers another.
Before you can take it all in, the bathysphere is whisked onward. It surfaces in a hall, in the dark. And that's when your troubles begin.
The Adam and Eve that the signs refer to is a gene therapy. Adam is a plasmid that offers residents of Rapture superhuman abilities. Unnatural beauty. Enhanced intelligence. Blinding speed. Fireballs. Electric fingers. For the highly strung creative types of Rapture, the potential for self-improvement is too much. A new kind of consumer market appears, run by a crazed natural scientist named Tenenbaum.
Tenenbaum defines the term 'damaged mother'. She's a tremendously talented theoretician, but much of her practical work comes from experiments on friends and relatives in the concentration camps. After the war, Tenenbaum saw in Rapture a place to continue her work undisturbed by, you know, actual morals.
But Rapture falls. Falls hard. As I was to discover through my own exploration of BioShock's sunken world.
The bathysphere surfaces just outside the ballroom of the Hotel Kashmir: party central. The last major celebration the Kashmir hosted was a New Year's Eve party. Riots, random aggression and excessive plasmid use all converged in an all-night orgy of violence. In the chaos, the citizens of Rapture were given a choice: embrace the new genetic order, or retain their humanity. Gain superhuman powers in a tinderbox environment, or remain powerless against insane acts of violence.
Through the glass of the bathysphere I can see a lone, panicked man looking about. A noise off-screen, and then violence: out of the dark, a woman/man/thing, flies toward him. She's one of the partygoers, a 'Splicer', Ken tells me. She has a huge hook and a demented scream. The man doesn't last long. The hook is plunged into his stomach, and then his face. He falls. Sensing another presence, the Splicer turns to the bathysphere, looks through the tiny window, directly into my eyes. Then she vanishes.
You're not alone in this place. There are the lunatic enemies, of course. But there are others here, with agendas and foresight, plans for you, and plans for escape. After picking up a short-wave radio, you're contacted by an Irishman named Atlas. Philosophical and historical detour approaching - beware. Many of the themes behind BioShock are based on the work of Ayn Rand, the Russian-born novelist who taught the ideals of 'Objectivism' in her fiction. Rand believed that there was no higher moral purpose than "rational self-interest and the pursuit of individual happiness".
Objectivists have no truck with religion or beliefs based on faith and believe that government's only role is the protection of an individual's rights. Rand's last novel was Atlas Shrugged - it was about how society collapses once the talented, smart and clever can no longer stand "moochers and looters" (Rand includes the State in with the beggars) receiving handouts from their earnings. By the end of the book, the central characters discover an enclave of "independent productive achievers", who've cut themselves off from the rest of society.
In BioShock, Atlas seems to be the manifestation of that "pursuit of happiness". Atlas's only concern is the safety of himself and his immediate family - his long-term happiness. In all this chaos, he'll do anything to survive: even sacrificing your humanity.
Soon, I come across another Splicer. She's quietly sobbing, rocking a pram back and forth, trying to soothe her baby. I can't see her eyes - she's wearing a rabbit mask, presumably from that New Year's Eve party. Rather than tackle her head-on, I sneak behind. Is she friendly or... No. She comes wailing out of the darkness, banging her lead pipe on the tiled floor.
It's my first time in the light, my first chance to take in the glorious Art Deco surroundings, the intricate wooden carvings above the hallways, the adverts that exhort you to dull the pain with Chechnya Vodka or invest in the perfect "Fontaine Dandy Smile". To gaze at the dramatic underwater landscape visible through the three-storey-high glass directly ahead. But there's no time. No time for anything but to repel and attack, caving in her face with an abandoned wrench.
I check the pram, curious to see her offspring. But there's no baby. Just a gun. A few rooms ahead, Atlas urges me to pick up a blue vial. "Inject yourself," he orders. The room starts spinning. "That's your first plasmid, then?" he laughs, as my head hits the floor. "Don't worry. You'll get over the side-effects." It's an electricity bolt plasmid - I can now fire an arc of lightning from my fingers. It sounds simple: point at an enemy, fire, and see them fall over, writhing in pain.
But it's not. Ken's points out that BioShock's combat is built on the idea of a one-two punch. "Plasmids are best used to augment your other weaponry - they're not just spells from an RPG." A pistol and a plasmid are a perfect team. In this early case, the one-two punch is simple. The bolt can shock an enemy - they'll stand and jiggle while electricity courses up and down their body. Meanwhile, it gives you the perfect opportunity to walk right up and calmly execute them. Place the barrel of the revolver against their forehead and pull the trigger.
It's a smart technique. Within a few moments, I've adapted, and can calmly thread through a swarm of Splicers. When each charges I stop it in its tracks, fizzing. To finish them off, I calmly walk forward, place the barrel of the pistol between their eyes, and fire.
Later, I'm confronted by small gun-turrets and surveillance cameras. If you're spotted by the latter, they'll summon small hovering gun-platforms. Again, the electricity bolt plasmid proves its worth. Turrets and bots can be temporarily disabled by overcharging them. Then, you can quickly hack into them, turning them to your side.
You hack by playing a small mini-game - it's a simple version of Tubemania. You're confronted by a six-by-six grid. At one point along the side of the grid, water is flowing. You have to guide it safely to an exit, by first uncovering pieces of tube, and then arranging them so they draw a complete unbroken line. You uncover pieces of tube by clicking all over the grid. Some will be straight vertical or horizontal lines. Others will be bends, turning left, right, up or down. Succeed, and with the turrets and a hovering guard behind, you can dominate an area without firing a shot - just letting your mechanical charges commit the violence while you stay in cover.
Back to the plasmids; and the others are no less entertaining. A fire plasmid ignites anything you touch - including Splicers. Their screams are awful. You almost feel sorry for them as they turn and dash toward the nearest water to douse themselves. Almost. Until you realise you can electrify the water they're leaping into.
A telekinesis plasmid acts as a organic gravity gun - enabling you to pluck improvised tin-can grenades out of the air and fling them back at foes.
The fights just get more and more vicious and complicated. Far quicker and far more action-orientated than System Shock 2. It's an evolved shooter - where your weapons and strategy are cobbled from your surroundings. As I journey deeper into Rapture, I face six, seven enemies at once - rapidly swapping between plasmids and weapons - freezing one, then turning to deal with the next with a shotgun. Then pulling the piton of a trip-wire mine out of the wall with my telekinesis ability and reinserting across the corridor ahead. The two charging Splicers set off the trap just an instant later.
It's relentless. But it doesn't become any less engaging. Between fights, I get to explore the ruins of a medical centre. There are voice logs in the rubble: the stories of the newly insane inhabitants. One, a plastic surgeon, declares himself a god. Later, I find his work - he's pinned three corpses to the wall using surgical scissors, their bowels spilling onto the floor, scalpels through their eyes. Apparently my new genetic abilities include glimpses into past traumatic events. Ghosts. In one terrifying vision, the spectre of a panicked woman bangs against a door, pleading to be let in. She turns, screams and then fades away.
And finally, we meet the Big Daddy. And it's here that Ken reveals the true genesis of Rapture. "BioShock didn't begin as a shooter. We began making the game with three AI types, and started playing with their interactions. We had a protector, a gatherer and an aggressor type, and we discovered it was really fun just to interact with them." In the final game, the aggressors are the Splicers. The gatherers are the Little Sisters, so cruelly dealt with earlier. And the protectors: they're the Big Daddies.
"But we had nowhere to put them," continues Ken. "We needed an enclosed space, a space where we could control absolutely everything they did, where we could predict what they'd interact with, and how. We don't want to make a city block where there are invisible walls. We want a space we can simulate one hundred per cent." That train of thought led to Rapture's tight, claustrophobic enclaves. And that train of thought led to this one incredible moment: taking on the Big Daddy.
The Little Sisters harvest Adam from dead Splicers. One of them is here now, skipping as happily as can be. Sure, she might choke a little at the aftertaste of the fluid she extracts from the dead. But she's safe. Behind her, a Big Daddy. He's a ton of copper plate, drill and diving helmet, the toughest bad in the game. When we approach his Little Sister, he turns and points his shotgun at us. His gestures are aggressive, and though he doesn't speak, the message is clear: back off.
But I want the girl. The Adam inside her is valuable. I can use it to buy further plasmids, or just more genetic slots, allowing me to wield more than a pair of plasmids at once. I have to make a decision - kill the girl, or leave her be.
First: the Big Daddy. To take on such a hulking beast, a plan is needed.
I start by hacking the surrounding turrets and security cameras. They're on my side now - anyone hostile to me can expect to be riddled with bullets. Then I explore. I'm upstairs, above the medical pavilion. It's mostly office space - late '50s office space, with a few surgery rooms off a hallway that loops back on itself. In the rooms, a few Splicers are sitting, ranting to themselves. This could be it.
The last plasmid I took was called 'Enrage'. It's a beacon for aggression - anyone who sniffs the cloud that erupts around them will attack. That's my first move - enrage the Big Daddy, so all the Splicers are drawn out, into battle. It works, to a certain extent - amidst the screams and the carnage, the Big Daddy takes a beating, the goons batting his armour with their scavenged weapons. But the Daddy is strong. In one punch, he sends two Splicers flying - they're ragdolled across the room, knocking back a desk. Only one gets up, shaking his head, before charging back in. Another punch finishes him off.
While the Big Daddy deals with the final Splicer, I unload a shotgun into the back of his helmet. It pings off. I switch to my pistol, loaded with armour piercing bullets. One, two, three shots to the head. He's still standing. And mad.
He shoulder-charges me, propelling me backward - now it's my turn to bounce off the walls. The room spins before righting itself. I stand, and fire my ice plasmid. It pauses him for a second, before he shakes free of its influence. I switch to telekinesis, picking up a chair and flinging it at him. It ricochets harmlessly off his armour.
Electricity? That might... no effect. Fire?
YES. He doesn't like fire - as he burns he throws up his arms, clawing at his mask. "Mr Bubbles!" cries the Little Sister, seeing her protector in pain. And then, finally, he keels over.
As I walk toward the little girl, she backs up, scrabbling at the floor, pushing up against the wall. Nowhere to run. I lean forward and pick her up by the neck. She's squealing again.
My hand brushes over the top of her face. Down her neck. It's time.
I'm not going to kill her this time. This time she's safe. I do, 'something', I'm not sure what. There's a blue light, a shimmering noise, and the yellow glow in her eye fades. She seems to wake up, looks me in the eyes for the first time.
"Thank you sir, thank you."
In this inhuman, terrifying place, that's what I needed to hear.
If it can match up to shock 2s horrifying gameplay I'll hail them as the greatest developers of all time. Also, im interested to know why a pcgamer article is on the site of arch enemy pczone?
Can you just edit the article and put, say, one sentence in great big letters at the top saying either "this is going to be bloody brilliant" or "this is going to promise a lot but actually not quite hit the mark and be a wee bit rubbish"?
For me, this is the big one this year - please, please let it be good.
The only thing better than this game =P is probably that preview for it... i mean i was interested constantly through that well written =P oh and the game looks good... times like now i wish the crap 360 didnt break all the time....
That first paragraph or so freaked me out a bit, i'm not sure i could handle that sort of thing in a game, killing little girls and all that. Still it looks like you can be nice as well so that's ok....
That first paragraph or so freaked me out a bit, i'm not sure i could handle that sort of thing in a game, killing little girls and all that. Still it looks like you can be nice as well so that's ok....
Not able to kill little girls? YOU CALL YOURSELF A GAMER?????
I agree, I've been sold several times over so the only thing that all these videos will serve to do is possibly spoil the final game. I'm staying away from all Bioshock previews and trailers. So that I will enjoy it that much more when it finally comes out. Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I haven't found any min specs or release date for the PC version. This might either be my last game on my current build or first on the next. Anyway, here's to them finishing the game in a timely manner... cheers!
I haven't found any min specs or release date for the PC version
Although perhaps not final, when we asked about the minimum PC specs for Bioshock, Irrational told us that a P4 2.5GHz with 512MB of RAM and a Pixel Shader 3.0 card will be the starting point.
Bioshock has the potential to be far more than just a glorified shooter, but unfortunately this preview seems to concentrate on that aspect almost exclusively.
This could be the most remarkable shooter since Half-Life 2.
*sighs*
Half Life 2 wasn't really that good, same old crap with a better graphics engine.
Bioshock will drop a truck load of already festering manure on HL2.
/I Thank You.
You're entitled to your opinion, even if it is wrong.
Same old s**t though? Hardly. The use of physics was unprecedented & pushed forward new gameplay. The gravity gun was a totally new concept. The design, setting and everything else was unlike anything else in any other shooter.
It wasn't without its flaws, but calling it the same old crap is simply a load of b******s.
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