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

For the record

[Pluvius]

The Steam version also has these updates, along with the retail PC version, I imagine.

Rob

Re:For the record

[gEvil (beta)]

He's saying that the updates are available for the Steam version. He then goes on to state that he imagines that they're also available for the standalone PC version.

Re:For the record

[shoptroll]

Which is what the Take-Two support announcement for the patch says.

Bo-oring

[Cathoderoytube]

Considering how genuinely good Bioshock was I'll actually be looking forward to a sequel. I just have to ask, who's this Ken fellow, and why doesn't the Bioshock team ever want to work with him again? Seems to me like that would be a much more interesting story than 'Hey a new game is coming out'

Re:Bo-oring

[vimh42]

I don't know. Bioshock was definitely one of the better games out this year. Not sure yet who takes the crown, Bioshock or Mass Effect (have not beat the latter) but I'd be more interested a new story as opposed to a sequel for Bioshock. There were a few letdowns after all. Notably the ending.

Re:Bo-oring

[twistedsymphony]

I'm not quite sure how a "sequel" would work considering in the end the game does one of those X years later here's where he is now... and you die.

It would seem to me that the best course of action would probably be along the lines of the story from a different perspective perhaps reliving the events leading up to the collapse of Rapture from the perspective of one of the citizens. The world they created in the game was far to rich and interesting to simply dump for a new story. I want more rapture but I don't necessarily want more of the same story or characters.

Re:Bo-oring

[TibbonZero]

Prequel?

Re:Bo-oring

[jandrese]

Also, anybody who didn't think there would be a Bioshock 2, please raise your hands so we can laugh at you. Even if the entire team quit and 2K had to hire a bunch of hacks to make it, you can count on the fact that they're going to bank on the Bioshock name.

Actually, it is a little worrisome that so many of the developers have apparently moved on already. Gaming (and especially PC gaming) is rife with crappy sequels made by a different development group than the great original game.

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:Bo-oring

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I'd like a prequel. One where I can go back in time and warn myself never to play Bioshock in the first place.

Re:Bo-oring

[happyemoticon]

Ken Levine was the lead designer of System Shock 2 and Bioshock, and worked on Thief: The Dark Project and (I think) the original System Shock as well. I wouldn't liken him to Steve Jobs or something, but clearly the former two would've been significantly different if not for his input, if they'd happened at all.

The rumor about people being fed up with Levine is probably just a couple of people with chips on their shoulders. Someone usually thinks the manager has it in for them, regardless of whether it's true or not.

Re:Bo-oring

[nog_lorp]

*cough*MDK2*cough*

Re:Bo-oring

[PrescriptionWarning]

I felt pretty pleased about the ending of Mass Effect... Sure there's more butt kicking to be had in the sequels but it didn't leave me feeling confused or bewildered as the main mission or task at hand was more or less complete. Kinda like the end of Star Wars: A New Hope, where you know the empire's gotta go down, but the job has only just begun, as opposed to the ending of Empire Strikes Back where they leave you with a big can of worms.

Re:Bo-oring

[twistedsymphony]

Maybe, maybe not. I was thinking more along the lines of a time-line that started slightly before Bioshock 1 but eventually caught up and ran synonymously with it... Maybe such that you ran across some of the aftermath of Bioshock 1's protagonist or had your storyline otherwise effected by his actions. Just enough to intertwine the two but not enough that you felt like you were playing the fly on the wall the whole time.

If you ever played the Blade Runner PC game it does an amazing job of this where you play a completely different detective out of the same office as Harrison Ford's character, you see some of the same locations and there are are lots of other references to events from the movie (like you might overhear an NPC talking about a movie event) but the story you play and the characters you meet are all completely separate and unique they just happen to be set in the same fantasy world and during roughly the same time period as the movie.

I only suggested starting early enough to see the collapse of Rapture to help put a different perspective on the game world, not that it starts AND FINISHES before the first game.

Re:Bo-oring

[Tuidjy]

> Not sure yet who takes the crown, Bioshock or Mass Effect (have not beat the latter)
> but I'd be more interested a new story as opposed to a sequel for Bioshock.

I played both Bioshock and Mass Effect, and think the Witcher is better than both of them. Of
course, you may not end up thinking so, but if you're looking for a new story, you'll get one.

Re:Bo-oring

[DeepZenPill]

I enjoyed the game the first time through, and recommended it to several friends, but afterwards had absolutely no desire to play it again on hard. I also felt guilty for telling people to go drop 60 bucks on it for a one-play-through experience. I forced myself to finish it on hard a month later, but it wasn't really enjoyable. I've heard plenty of people say the same thing, so why did it get such high reviews and still has people raving about it? Other games have been panned for much less, so what gives?

Re:Bo-oring

[The Evil Couch]

Replayability is usually not a criteria for reviewers. They play the game start to finish as fast as possible and if the trip was awesome, then it gets rave reviews. In general, game reviewers don't have time to play it, let their first impression fade and then play it again. The impatient, gotta-have-it-now attitude of the public has basically forced mainstream game reviews to drop in quality.

Re:Bo-oring

[Seumas]

BioShock was an enjoyable game, but what in the hell are they smoking?! I've already beat the game. Do they really think I'm going to return to play it again just because they add a few things to the game that perhaps could or should have been added in the first place, so I could have enjoyed them the first time around?

New content (actual story, etc) is one thing. Sticking in some random crap is irrelevant. There are too many awesome games out there to play and only so much time in which to do it.

Re:Bo-oring

[kshade]

I'm not quite sure how a "sequel" would work considering in the end the game does one of those X years later here's where he is now... and you die. That's one of the two endings, though the other one is probably better suited for a Red Alert 2-ish RTS than a real Bioshock sequel :>

Re:Bo-oring

[ShadowsHawk]

My thought exactly. I would love to see the decline of Rapture first hand. Perhaps take a hand in the political power struggle.

Remarkable

[steveo777]

All the content plus the widescreen issue fixed... I'm proud of them. This is admirable. I'll have to pop the game back in just to check it out. When I'm done with Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, and Fire Emblem...

Project X

[MagusZeal]

The more interesting bit to me is the project X they mention is apparently another X-com remake. So let me be the first to say, please Cthulhu don't let them fubar it!

Re:Project X

[forkboy]

oh god oh god please let this be true. i have been waiting on a game that lives up to the original xcom forever.

Re:Project X

[stg]

Personally, I really liked Ufo:Afterlight... A few minor problems, but other than that I thought it was as good as the original X-COM.

Re:Project X

[Olix]

Afterlight was cool indeed. They needed to write better fiction for it, though - one of the cool things about X-COM was all the autopsies and general creative writing of the research - Afterlight really lacked on that front.

It was too repetitive, too - though I suppose the same could be said of X-COM to an extent. It seemed worse in afterlight somehow, though.

Also, we need destructable terrain! The was one of the coolest things about the first game...

Re:Project X

[sammy baby]

If the new X-Com game could snag the Bioware authors who wrote the "Codex" entries for Mass Effect...

Can't wait until we see a new "football of death" weapon. (I have no recollection of what this weapon was actually called - some kind of guided rocket launcher? - just that the projectile looked like a self-guided football and had an impressively large boom.)

Re:Project X

[Firethorn]

You're looking for 'Blaster Bomb'.

And yes, it was indeed quite sweet.

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.

I also use Gentoo.

[Eco-Mono]

Well, assuming that you wanted to play the game in the first place, it'll affect you as soon as Wine gets its DX9 support caught up - they've already gotten around SecuRom issues.

Any day now. ;)

Perfect Time

[Durrok]

Now is the perfect time to go back through on hard and play it using only plasmids and a wrench. :)
br

Re:How about an Actual "Hard Mode" ?

[MooseMuffin]

While not mentioned in the article /. linked to, the downloadable content also adds an option to the options menu to disable vita chambers.

Re:How about an Actual "Hard Mode" ?

[Bugs42]

How about the Vita chambers are spread farther apart (or cut in half)? or how about a limited # of respawns... something like 10 total. Or maybe turning off the Vita chambers entirely, like the summary says you can do?

Sheesh, have we really progressed from RTFA to RTFS? What's next, people blindly commenting on stories without even reading the headlines?

But it was never "broken" according to 2k!

[randyest]

The update will also fix the 'widescreen issue' that caused some consternation just after the title's release.

What? The official word from 2K was that the aspect ratio was "as designed" and there was no problem to fix. What an odd backpedal to come now after all that screaming and yelling (and banning and post deleting) on the forums. I recall people were pissed, but 2K said the FOV in widescreen was as-intended, and they just chose to add "extra" vertical FOV in non-widescreen mode instead of the opposite (and typical) option of extending the horizontal FOV in widescreen vs. non.

It doesn't really matter to me though since I get no sound after the intro in the demo (even after every "fix" known to the 2K forums and google) so I guess I saved myself $50 -- I was looking forward to this game though. Maybe by the time that issues is fixed it'll be cheaper :)

Re:But it was never "broken" according to 2k!

[tgibbs]

What? The official word from 2K was that the aspect ratio was "as designed" and there was no problem to fix. What an odd backpedal to come now after all that screaming and yelling (and banning and post deleting) on the forums. I recall people were pissed, but 2K said the FOV in widescreen was as-intended, and they just chose to add "extra" vertical FOV in non-widescreen mode instead of the opposite (and typical) option of extending the horizontal FOV in widescreen vs. non.

They have not changed their position that the aspect ratio is as intended, but they announced months ago that they were working on a patch to allow people who for whatever reason do not like the original aspect ratio to modify it to something more to their taste.

The original aspect ratio is actually quite well chosen, and probably had a lot to do with the game's success. At typical viewing distances, the aspect ratio is such that objects in the game appear close to "actual size," without the edge distortion visible in games that use an unrealistically wide aspect ratio, which makes it very immersive and suspenseful. But some people who are accustomed to shooters with an unrealistically wide aspect ratio found it too claustrophobic, and a few even insisted that it made them motion-sick (oddly enough, I had the opposite reaction; I had less problem with motion sickness with Bioshock than with any other first-person game I've played). But 2K/Irrational has clearly chosen to take a "customer is always right" stance, which clearly makes good business sense. After all, it's not a competitive game, so if somebody wants to play the game in a wider aspect ratio that detracts from the game experience, why should they care, as long as they get their money?

Re:How about an Actual "Hard Mode" ?

[randyest]

You must be new here.

Welcome to slashdot!

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.

Re:How about an Actual "Hard Mode" ?

[bartle]

Now, the Achievement for not dying once may get some people to play it more tactically, but Bioshock was still piss easy on "Hard". The only time I was actually worried about dying in the game (minor spoiler) was when Frank was reducing your maximum possible health. Every other time in the game, it was only a minor setback to get killed since there was a vita chamber every 10 feet (with no cost to use them).

I thought that was a brilliant twist in the game. Most first person shooters are designed to be hard and it's an uphill battle to get to the end. Not so in Bioshock; you start out playing that way but it's eventually revealed that the game's been rigged - you're a living weapon being used by someone else and losing isn't even an option for you.

This new Brass Balls achievement is the perfect answer. The plot remains intact but the challenge is there for anyone who wants to play Bioshock as a traditional FPS.

Free Update?

[morari]

You mean like a patch? Wow, you're telling me that developers sometimes release fixes and/or add small features to their games after release and that they can be obtained for free? That is awesome! I hope all companies see this interesting new business model, as I think it could really catch on!

Widescreen Fix?

[Arrowmaster]

If this was suppost to fix widescreen I still want to know why I'm forced to play in widescreen even after getting this update on my Xbox360? I'm using the VGA cable connected to a fullscreen LCD and using a fullscreen resolution of 1024x768 but the game is still in widescreen leaving me with big black bars on the top and bottem.... Why did they only fix the FOV for the whiny brats but not fix this. A wider FOV but still being stuck with letter boxing is going to make everything look even smaller since my LCD is only 20" and letter boxing reduces the viewable area down to about the size of a 17-18" widescreen which don't even exist because they're stupidly small. I've actually noticed this with a lot of games but Bioshock is one of the few games that its so noticeable that its annoying and detracts from the gameplay.

Re:Widescreen Fix?

[LilBlackDemon]

Check your 360. I have a similar setup, but I have a 1680x1050 LCD. Typically, I run mine at 1380x768, but for BioShock I ran it at 1024x768 to get the vertical space back. You may have set your 360 to display in letterboxed mode, or your LCD could be adjusting to a widescreen resolution. AFAIK, BioShock doesn't have its own widescreen setting.

william shatner

[SoyChemist]

It sounds like personal politics of the the star trek cast.