*OLD*Official Bioshock Thread

[Mem]

IGN has Q&A with project leader of BioShocK Jon Chey link ,pics are looking good too .


Also water video clip can be found and downloaded in this link.

<blockquote>quote:
The water in BioShock is one of the most fascinating aspects, technically and visually, of the game. I would argue it's the most realistic water I've ever seen in game. And, as Rapture is an underwater city, and is drowning as your character enters it, water is, of course, an integral part of the story.

Today we're going to focus on water, first with a video that highlights some water in Rapture, and then with a Q&A I had two water gurus at Irrational: Stephan Alexander, FX Artist, and Jesse Johnson, Graphics Programmer. They were very excited to talk about all aspects of building the water in BioShock, so I hope you enjoy. </blockquote>


Software for Windows -> PC Gaming

-Schadenfroh

 

[TheVrolok]

Waiting to upgrade my comp for this one.

 

[Cabages]

If my comp cant handle this, then ill have to go to the 360. But either way this game looks fvckin sweet.

 

[apoppin]

is there any 'goal' for the release date ... late this year or next?

 

[CrackRabbit]

For those of you with a Xbox 360 there are a couple of gameplay videos that have been posted on Live.

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: apoppin
is there any 'goal' for the release date ... late this year or next?

"The announced release date is reported as August 21, 2007 in North America and August 24, 2007 in Europe." was the last thing I heard.

 

[Noema]

They had better not delay it again. This is probably my most awaited 2007 shooter, along with Crysis. And one of the main reasons I'm updating my computer.

 

[Mem]

Preview over@[url="http://www.jolt.co.uk/index.php?articleid=8759"]jolt.[/url]

Ultimately, the biggest quandary will be whether players choose to save themselves, or whether they throw everything into the mixer to risk it all, following a path to save the citizens of Rapture and ?become their hero? - so Irrational claims. In light of this, it?s almost impossible to grab hold of anything more concrete, apart from the fact that BioShock is going to be different. Both the game and the city are set to rival the likes of Metal Gear in terms of mystery and intrigue.

Release date looks like 24th AUGUST.

 

[sandorski]

wow, fantastic

 

[Mem]

New Bioshock clip can be found here ,looks great .

 

[Trevelyan]

Originally posted by: Mem
New Bioshock clip can be found here ,looks great .

AWESOME

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: Trevelyan

Originally posted by: Mem
New Bioshock clip can be found here ,looks great .

AWESOME

very awesome

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Some bad news folks.

The devs have had to make some significant gameplay changes to avoid the dreaded AO rating. The problem is over the killing/harvesting of the little sisters. They've decided to make them invulnerable to normal weapons, so they can only be harvested after the big daddy has been defeated, presenting the player with a pop-up yes/no menu whether or not they want to harvest the LS. It's clear that putting little girls (or monsters that look like little girls) in violent video games is a bad idea - 'OMFG, they let you murder little girls!'. It's disappointing to see this because it removes quite a bit of strategy and challenge from the game. I wish that IG had used a less controversial character for their adam carriers (something bigger and uglier, instead of little girls in dresses).

The other likely reason for this nerf is that the game would be too difficult to play on the 360 because of the inaccurate controller.

 

[CrystalBay]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Some bad news folks.

The devs have had to make some significant gameplay changes to avoid the dreaded AO rating. The problem is over the killing/harvesting of the little sisters. They've decided to make them invulnerable to normal weapons, so they can only be harvested after the big daddy has been defeated, presenting the player with a pop-up yes/no menu whether or not they want to harvest the LS. It's clear that putting little girls (or monsters that look like little girls) in violent video games is a bad idea - 'OMFG, they let you murder little girls!'. It's disappointing to see this because it removes quite a bit of strategy and challenge from the game. I wish that IG had used a less controversial character for their adam carriers (something bigger and uglier, instead of little girls in dresses).

The other likely reason for this nerf is that the game would be too difficult to play on the 360 because of the inaccurate controller.

How Lame...

 

[ixelion]

Is this game DX10? Even though I have 8800GTS and a copy of Vista, I want to stay with Windows XP and and it would suck if the game didnt look as good in DX9.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Some bad news folks.

The devs have had to make some significant gameplay changes to avoid the dreaded AO rating. The problem is over the killing/harvesting of the little sisters. They've decided to make them invulnerable to normal weapons, so they can only be harvested after the big daddy has been defeated, presenting the player with a pop-up yes/no menu whether or not they want to harvest the LS. It's clear that putting little girls (or monsters that look like little girls) in violent video games is a bad idea - 'OMFG, they let you murder little girls!'. It's disappointing to see this because it removes quite a bit of strategy and challenge from the game. I wish that IG had used a less controversial character for their adam carriers (something bigger and uglier, instead of little girls in dresses).

The other likely reason for this nerf is that the game would be too difficult to play on the 360 because of the inaccurate controller.

What's odd about the whole thing is that games have had the ability to kill little girls in dresses that were rated M. Deus Ex 2, for example, let you slaughter an entire elementary school and that was a console game as well, so they probably didn't do it because of fear over an AO rating. Just cowards over there, I guess.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Some bad news folks.

The devs have had to make some significant gameplay changes to avoid the dreaded AO rating. The problem is over the killing/harvesting of the little sisters. They've decided to make them invulnerable to normal weapons, so they can only be harvested after the big daddy has been defeated, presenting the player with a pop-up yes/no menu whether or not they want to harvest the LS. It's clear that putting little girls (or monsters that look like little girls) in violent video games is a bad idea - 'OMFG, they let you murder little girls!'. It's disappointing to see this because it removes quite a bit of strategy and challenge from the game. I wish that IG had used a less controversial character for their adam carriers (something bigger and uglier, instead of little girls in dresses).

The other likely reason for this nerf is that the game would be too difficult to play on the 360 because of the inaccurate controller.

What's odd about the whole thing is that games have had the ability to kill little girls in dresses that were rated M. Deus Ex 2, for example, let you slaughter an entire elementary school and that was a console game as well, so they probably didn't do it because of fear over an AO rating. Just cowards over there, I guess.

does anyone remember Painkiller where - i think it was the expansion - you had to kill little demon children? ... pretty sick ... they still looked like little kids

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Originally posted by: HamburgerBoy

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo
Some bad news folks.

The devs have had to make some significant gameplay changes to avoid the dreaded AO rating. The problem is over the killing/harvesting of the little sisters. They've decided to make them invulnerable to normal weapons, so they can only be harvested after the big daddy has been defeated, presenting the player with a pop-up yes/no menu whether or not they want to harvest the LS. It's clear that putting little girls (or monsters that look like little girls) in violent video games is a bad idea - 'OMFG, they let you murder little girls!'. It's disappointing to see this because it removes quite a bit of strategy and challenge from the game. I wish that IG had used a less controversial character for their adam carriers (something bigger and uglier, instead of little girls in dresses).

The other likely reason for this nerf is that the game would be too difficult to play on the 360 because of the inaccurate controller.

What's odd about the whole thing is that games have had the ability to kill little girls in dresses that were rated M. Deus Ex 2, for example, let you slaughter an entire elementary school and that was a console game as well, so they probably didn't do it because of fear over an AO rating. Just cowards over there, I guess.

Here's Ken Levine's explanation of this:

--------------------------------------------------------------

Hey guys-



So some thoughts on the situation. First of all, this approach was entirely directed by me, not by any corporate marketing department or the ESRB. I?m going to use the word ?I? in this post a lot, instead of ?We? not because I did the wonderful Little Sister animation (that was Shawn Roberston and team) or I implemented their AI (that was John Abercrombie and team). I just want to be clear that I called the shots on this, and if people have issues with this, they should direct their issues at me and not marketing or members of the team. 2k has stood by us on this morally challenging and very, very intense game.


My goal has always been to make the game impactful and disturbing but not exploitative. BioShock is the thematically darkest game I?ve ever made. It might be the thematically darkest game I?ve ever played. (SOME SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS IN THE REST OF THE PARAGRAPH) Insurgents hang from street lamps. Entire families are found in obscene, undying portraits, a bottle of poison sitting on their coffee table. The streets of Rapture are filled with a thousand individual scenes, of lives and dreams obliterated in a brutal civil war at the bottom of the ocean. Even the woman advising you not to harm the Little Sister in the game is a scientist, a survivor of the the concentration camps who once experimented on her own people.



At the end of the day, you are indeed choosing to either rescue or take the life of one of these little sisters. However, given the nature of the subject matter and the gameplay impacts of this choice, we took a very particular course of action regarding the Little Sisters for the following reasons:


1) Intention.

As another member posted, Little Sisters and the Adam they carry are indeed a limited commodity in the game. In our original testing, we found people were unintentionally having violent interactions with the little sisters all the time. This really pissed off players who were intent on rescuing them.

Well, you might say, how could this happen? BioShock is a game with a huge amount of player expression and, well, controlled and uncontrolled chaos. Setting a trip wire trap for a Big Daddy and having a Little Sister stumble frankly sucked from a gameplay perspective. A gunshot goes wild, fire spreads throughout the world and ignites passersby, a grenade takes a bad bounce?

For the player really pushing down the character growth path of Little Sister rescuing, the insults of potentially dozens of unintentional attacks on Little Sisters

2) Impact. Remember the original E3 demo video? There was a bug there and a Little Sister got caught in the crossfire. From where I?m sitting. It wasn?t impactful. It wasn?t shocking. It wasn?t anything. The action was unintentional, at a distance, and made an emotional impression of zero. (on me at least, I can?t speak for others out there). In contrast, the sequences now where you save or harvest the little sister is pretty intense. When you?re fighting the Big Daddy, she?s pretty vocal:

?UNZIP HIM MR B!?

She shouts, eferring to Mr. Bubbles, the nickname she has for the Big Daddy.

"TEAR HIM INTO LITTLE BITS!"

-she cries, until the Big Daddy goes down. After you kill a big daddy, the little sister is found literally mourning over the corpse of her former protector. She?s crying, and you can hear her lamentations over the loss of her friend. It?s kind of awful.



??what am I going to do now?? she cries, or pathetically intones ?Muh-muh-muh Mr. Bub-bub-bles??

And there she is, defenseless. And you?re left with a choice. And this isn?t a choice you make at a distance. It isn?t a choice you make when her protector is breathing down your throat, that you can later make excuses for. This is a choice you have to make when she?s standing right in front of you, weeping because the closest thing she knows as a parent is lying dead in front of her.

But don?t get me wrong. I?m not making a game that has anything to do with the joy of hunting down a childlike creature with a gun. My goal was to distill the choice down to what it?s really about. There?s something that may or may not be a child in front of you. If you want to survive, if you want to save the wife and family of the man who?s been helping you survive Rapture, you must harvest the Adam from these Little Sisters.

The Little Sister is defenseless in front of you. Gone are the tools of the first person shooter, the tools that you use so often and after years of gaming, without thinking. What you now have in your hand are the almost surgical tools of Adam extraction.

Rescue or Harvest. Rescue or Harvest.

It?s up to you.





(note: for those worried about the fictional justification for the Little Sisters resistance to damage from sources other than the Adam extraction tools, they are indeed in the game. If people want to know more about this, I can post on the topic.)


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------



So according to him, the change was made because the sisters were dying too often, making it either too easy for those who set out to kill them, or too difficult for those who wish to keep them alive, as they'd get caught in stray gunfire or grenade blasts, which would also allow one to circumvent the fight with big daddy. This is probably true, but I hate to see games go to the invulnerable charater card to make up for flawed gameplay, usually because of bad AI. I even hated it in Deus Ex.

Still, I'd bet that the ESRB had something to do with this decision. A lot of stuff has happened since the likes of DX2 and PK with Jack Thompson and all.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo

So according to him, the change was made because the sisters were dying too often, making it either too easy for those who set out to kill them, or too difficult for those who wish to keep them alive, as they'd get caught in stray gunfire or grenade blasts, which would also allow one to circumvent the fight with big daddy. This is probably true, but I hate to see games go to the invulnerable charater card to make up for flawed gameplay, usually because of bad AI. I even hated it in Deus Ex.

Still, I'd bet that the ESRB had something to do with this decision. A lot of stuff has happened since the likes of DX2 and PK with Jack Thompson and all.

so yes, as he [didn't] said the decision was purely political ...

one he can live with because it is true to the plot and the 'improved game play' makes up for it ... we'll see

Ohh ... dark ...
:evil:

i like that .. depending -- if it is smart or stupid ... i found D3's "dark" to be stupid and grossly predictable

i already know what to do ... put the poor little sisters out of their misery ...
--HarvesTime

 

[LintMan]

Reading Ken Levine's explanation, I'm sold. I really like the idea of them making you think about the moral choices you're making by taking away the "oops, she was killed in the crossfire (wink wink)" easy way out. As for doing it for ESRB/political pressure, I don't really see it: You're still able to kill the Little Sisters (when you harvest), aren't you? Just not accidentally. I can't imagine Crank-in-Chief Jack Thompson being all that pleased.

apoppin - don't scare me with the Doom3 reference! God I hope Bioshock is nothing like that! Doom3's idea of gameplay was to make it so dark you could barely see, have monsters pop out of unopenable closets and panels after you pass by, andpredictably appear from nowhere when you pick up that armor suspiciously highlighted in the empty room.

 

[Mem]

Interview with Joe McDonagh of Bioshock

Joe McDonagh: There are very substantial gameplay differences between the two versions. Look, our heritage is PC. We?ve taken the differences between the two platforms very seriously. We look at history, we look at other PC/console games like Deus Ex 2. We realized that you need to treat them differently. Not only in terms of the balance, but also in the interface. We have a very different interface for the PC version of Bioshock, using much more drag and drop functionality.

In terms of the gameplay, we?ve rebalanced all of the enemies to make the PC version harder. We?ve taken Softlock out of the PC version. You need this ?locking on? with a console, because it?s so much harder to aim at something with a game pad, but you don?t need it on a PC. But of course, the Xbox 360 version still is the lead version of Bioshock.

 

[Mem]

Bioshock preview@GameSpy

Set in 1960, BioShock begins with you flying over the Atlantic (the sight of someone smoking on an airplane is a nice touch) when your plane crashes into the middle of the ocean. After momentarily blacking out -- during which time the game's logo is splashed across the screen -- you quickly regain consciousness underwater and swim to the surface, where you're greeted with the sight of flaming wreckage everywhere in sight. As you swim away from the debris, you spot a lighthouse oddly placed in the middle of nowhere, and swim towards it. Entering the lighthouse, instead of finding stairs leading upwards, you make your way downwards past strange symbols until reaching a bathysphere.

 

[Raduque]

I've been looking forward to this one since System Shock 2.

 

[Mem]

Preview@FiringSquad

It's a first person shooter that has a deep gameplay design and a setting and storyline that looks like will have us on the edge of our seats. Oh, and it just happens one of the best looking and most unique games we have ever seen. It's going to be a long wait for us to get to the end of August to find out how BioShock continues from where we had to stop playing that night at the press event back in April.

 

[userman]

Yes we still have a wile before that game is released.
So post pics, videos and interviews about bioshock here.

http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2610