New BioShock Content, BioShock 2 Rumors

Take Two notes that there's new downloadable content on the Xbox Live service for 2K Boston/Australia's BioShock. The ability to turn off the vita-chambers, as well as new plasmids and a brand-new achievement, will be included in the free update. The update will also fix the 'widescreen issue' that caused some consternation just after the title's release. There are also some rumours going around about the future of the series, in the form of a post to the Rock, Paper, Shotgun blog. That post is in turn based on comments from games industry rumor-blog Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars. "A good chunk of the BioShock team did not want to work with Ken [Levine] ever again, and 2K definitely understood the sentiment and let them set up a new studio so that they can make Bioshock 2, leaving Ken with Project X. A good chunk of the other senior 2K Boston people who were sick of Ken but didn't move to San Francisco ended up scattering to other AAA developers instead. In Quincy, they're essentially rebuilding a team from almost scratch again."

Comments

Nice boost, although it could have been better

[jandrese]

I think that patch would have been an excellent time to redo the crafting system and make it interesting. The existing system is pretty halfassed. Adding a mode that penalizes you for using the Vita chambers (make them cost money!) would have been a nice touch too.

As far as the actual improvements are concerned, the Sonic Boom will probably end up being one of those Novelty plasmids (Bees, Cyclone Trap, Security System Override) that end up being situational at best. The EVE reducer could go a long way towards letting players focus more on Plasmids than weapons though. The extra damage vs. anything hackable is pointless and even counterproductive since you usually don't want to destroy those things, you want to hack them. Cheaper stuff at the Vending Machines is ok, but I'm betting it's not a huge difference. It might be worthwhile in the early game, but later on when you're rolling in dough and full up on ammo anyway it'll probably get deslotted (I wonder when you get it?).

Re:Nice boost, although it could have been better

[What the Frag]

> I think that patch would have been an excellent time to redo the crafting system and make it interesting. The existing system is pretty halfassed.

I agree. It was not good for anything... Even on hard mode you have enough ammunition (and enough money), so why "invent" new ammunition? As I remember, you needed one of those stations for a quest, but there wasn't anything else.

Maybe that was one of the early plans to make some more quests or go create a "go-back to level x scenario to get a key for a bonus" scenario. They dumped all those interesting stuff at the end to make the game more "newbie-friendly".

> Adding a mode that penalizes you for using the Vita chambers (make them cost money!) would have been a nice touch too.
Oh, yes. That would have been great. Adding hit points to your enemies on "hard" level makes it not much more difficult to kill enemies. You only need more time killing them. You can run as long as you want towards you enemy with a wrench and in the end you enemy is dead, but you are not, without any penalty. This makes me rate this game as "easy", even on hard mode.

Re:Bo-oring

[hansamurai]

Ken Levine was the project director on Bioshock and was also the lead designer on some of the Thief and System Shock games. I wish we knew more about what happened during development that ticked off so many developers, but at least 2K was able to recognize their talent and seemingly devotion to the series that they're letting them continue.

Re:How about an Actual "Hard Mode" ?

[enderjsv]

Yeah, the lack of a death penalty made the game pretty easy, but what spoiled the game for me a bit was the absolute obviousness of the game's objectives. 90 percent of the time there is an arrow pointing you in the right direction, not to mention the map and the hints. The only time the arrow didn't help was during the collection-type missions, but if you were told to collect 3 of item X from some place, their would be 10 of that item in various locations. Now I know they give you the option to turn the arrow off, but I always figure that default settings are usually the way the developers intend you to play a game, so I rarely mess with them. Bioshock, while great, was one of the easiest games I've played in a long while. I bet the sequel won't be as easy.