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Irrational's Ken Levine on BioShock's final boss and how Infinite's solution is 'more in our wheelhouse'
"So every game we make, we always say to ourselves -- back on BioShock 1, we had that terrible showdown fight at the end -- we're not good at that, let's not do that again. And then somehow, we end up ... it's like ... 'Baby I'll never hit you again, I'm changed, I'm changed!' And then we did it!" Irrational Games head and BioShock 1 creative lead Ken Levine struggled through that explanation this past weekend, pausing often, sighing a lot, and doubling back to be extra clear. His sentiment was certainly definitive, though: even he wasn't a big fan of the game's final boss fight with Atlas. "I think the boss battle in BioShock 1 -- the real boss battle -- is Andrew Ryan." I had asked about how BioShock Infinite, the studio's next game, would deal with boss fights, as the Atlas battle in the first BioShock title was seen by many as the lowest point in an otherwise spectacular experience. "I think we need to stay in our wheelhouse," he explained. "We're not Shadow of the Colossus. Those guys have a genius for that. We don't have that particular genius." Without getting into anything specific, and recognizing that it would be a "missed opportunity" not to do something with Songbird (Infinite's airborne antagonist), Levine said gamers should expect something more akin to the Andrew Ryan resolution in BioShock 1.
BioShock 2 Avatar items come to Xbox Live
The following comes to us from the BioShock Wiki: "Big Daddies are genetically-enhanced human beings who have had their skin and organs grafted into an enormous diving suit. The candidates also go through voice box modification and pheromone application. They are then placed in large vats with a substance that effectively turns them into mindless drones. With gene splicing, the humans inside the suits were given enhanced strength and agility." ... Or they could have just paid 320 points ($4) on Xbox Live. Jeez, we guess Andrew Ryan wasn't so smart after all. (Related note: If you spend $4 on a Big Daddy costume for your Avatar, you are, legally speaking, no longer entitled to the sweat of your own brow. Sorry.)
You decide: Should LittleBigPlanet hit the reset button after beta?
With about four days to go before the LittleBigPlanet beta comes to an end, Sony has put out an interesting question to the public: Should it keep the "levels and items" created during the beta and carry those over to the game's launch, or start the whole thing from scratch? It is a question worthy of some discussion.Anyone can vote in the LBP section of the Official PlayStation Forums before next Monday and Sony will go with whichever choice wins out. Sony is talking specifically about uploaded levels, any "save game data, offline creations or progress cannot be transferred into the full game." So, what's your course of action?
The Digital Continuum: Bioshock MMO
A torrent of happy thoughts burst forward from my brain at the rumor of a possible Bioshock MMO; Would it be good? When would it be set? Where would it even be set, Rapture, or some other previously unknown location? What kind of gameplay would it employ?These questions -- and many more like them -- are all great and also quite valid. This is why I couldn't help myself from exploring the possibilities of what such a game could deliver to us as players -- except with a particular twist. Being that Andrew Ryan was so very influential in both the world of Rapture as well as our own, this entire look into a Bioshock MMO has been written in the spirit of Mr. Ryan.With a fan-base as strong as the Big Daddies themselves, Bioshock could create quite the tsunami if it went massively multiplayer. Simply click on the picture above to find out the how and why.%Gallery-19327%
Forget Putin: Gaming icons Photoshopped as Persons of the Year
As upset as we were by Time's flubbing of us this year – a blogger can get used to seeing a horribly disfigured reflection of his own face in the cover of one of the nation's most prestigous newsweeklies y'know – the selection of Russian president Vladimir Putin as the magazine's Person of the Year (POTY) left us a little underwhelmed. Lucky for us, the folks at Something Awful remedied our apathy with a tall serving of Photoshop phakery, planting all sorts of video game icons on the magazine's cover. Mario and Master Chief are great and all, but our favorite is BioShock's Andrew Ryan. It was not impossible to choose a video game character as Time's Person of the Year ... it was impossible to choose anyone else.
