Irrational Games | Through the Shattered Lens

With today’s release of Irrational Games’ latest title, Bioshock Infinite, I look back with some fondness to the first game in the series: BioShock.

It was a game that blew most everyone away with it’s ease of gameplay, unique art direction and, most important of all, a story that made people think that gaming was close to reaching the level of art for the genre. It was a game that dared to use as one of it’s themes Ayn Rand’s own take on the philosophy of Objectivism. It was a game about choices. A game that put the player into making the moral choice of rescuing the creepy Little Sisters or harvesting them for a rare resource that meant killing them.

I’ve played the game so many times and have made choices both good and bad, but it was always difficult even knowing how things already turned out to make that first decision to either “rescue” or “harvest”. Below are the version of this very scene that fully sold the game and it’s story to me the first time I played it way back in 2007.

Harvest

Rescue

Ken Levine, head of 2K Games’ Irrational Games development studio, was on-stage during Sony’s E3 Press Conference to hype up his latest title to the acclaimed BioShock franchise. The third game in the series looks to take the series from it’s failed undersea utopian city of Rapture and into the skies. Like Rapture, BioShock Infinite will have a setting that will be a full-blown city but floating skyward attached to giant balloons and zeppelin-like structures with rails that act almost like rollercoaster tracks for players to move from place to place.

The trailer Levine showed at the Sony Presser looks to be one using all gameplay footage which is always a welcome sight since in year’s past too many games promised too much based on cinematic, pre-rendered trailers. I’m all for CG-animated trailers, but it’s always how the gameplay looks and plays that counts in the end.

One thing that was also announced by Levine during this press conference was how the Sony version of BioShock Infinite will have the option for players to use the Playstation Move motion controller to play through the game.

BioShock Infinite only has an approximate release date around 2012.