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BioShock 2's Creative Director On The 'Balancing Act' of Making a Sequel

Posted February 5, 2010 by James Brightman

IG: So we noticed that the vita chambers do indeed return for BioShock 2. You've no doubt heard the feedback that they made the first game too easy, that there were no consequences for dying. What's your take on this? 

JT: I think that they're actually a deceptively central design decision for BioShock – our goal is to never take quest progress away from the player. We want you to succeed and to continue to make progress with the narrative, regardless of whether the action is kind of holding you back and challenging you in the near term. So there was an exploit in the first game where the vita chambers would allow you to face something like a Big Daddy and whittle it down by using something that costs you nothing – hitting them with a wrench – and then die, come back and do the same thing [to easily beat the enemy]. In BioShock 2 the Little Sisters will actually heal the Big Daddies so you need to invest in more strategy to bring one down. So we feel like it's a pretty good balance because the difficulty peaks that the Big Daddies, Big Sisters, etc. represent are things where we want you to feel like you've moved into a moment of climax in terms of the challenge – but without ever feeling like you need to throw the controller into the screen because you just lost an hour of gameplay. That's just not a model that's appropriate to BioShock anymore.

Incinerate with plasmid plus drill baby drill for the win!

IG: In terms of the platforms, today you're showing the game on the Xbox 360. Would you consider that the lead platform? Or will BioShock 2 actually be totally equal on PS3?

JT: The original BioShock was brought over to PS3 after the fact, so at the time, the first game definitely treated the 360 as the lead platform. On BioShock 2, there hasn't been a lead – it's been purely simultaneous from the word go. So we've worked long and hard to minimize any discrepancies between them.

IG: Right, sometimes a publisher or developer will talk about the versions being equal but then the games come out and one SKU has a poor frame rate or whatever. But you seem confident that the two versions are equal.

JT: That has certainly been our goal. It'll be up to the individual critic to say “here are the differences that we notice” if there are any.

IG: What's your thinking as a developer on console exclusivity? Focusing on one platform allows you to leverage that platform's strengths rather than having to worry about making it for multiple consoles. But that also limits sales. What's your take?

JT: I wish I could give you a candid and controversial answer. [laughs] The fact is there are incredible strengths to both approaches. It ends up being about what kind of game you're trying to make. Is this something that could really only fit on one platform? Or does it feel like it wants to be part of the platform's kind of core brand? As a developer I have lived on both sides of the fence, and I've enjoyed the strength of either, so I don't have a strong preference. 

IG: BioShock was very much steeped in that '40s/'50s vibe. How would you describe BioShock 2? Obviously you drew upon the first game and tried to evolve it, but what inspirations did you look to as you approached the project?

JT: The setting has now been subject to 10 years of decay. So we did a lot of research into shipwrecks and other cases where flooding had occurred and sea life had been long at work on what was formerly a rigid, orderly piece of design. So we looked at the wreck of Titanic and other places where you could see a room that was once opulent and has been reclaimed [by the sea]. Because you can see those rooms and that vibe in BioShock 2. Beyond that there was just a lot of research into collectivist propaganda, and cults like Jonestown, for example, where Jim Jones' goal was very much to sell Marxism through the church – his exact words were “to infiltrate it.” So [BioShock 2's main antagonist] Sophia Lamb's aesthetic derives in part from religious iconography because she's trying to build a sense of secular brotherhood through a false faith.

You get to experience areas that were not sanctioned by [original BioShock antagonist] Andrew Ryan, which are kind of the untold story of Rapture in many ways. An area in BioShock 2 called Pauper's Drop is based on a number of Hoovervilles, so we looked at dozens and dozens of photos of real Hoovervilles and also more modern Hooverville-like communities like Kowloon Walled City, where there is functionally no law and no zoning and culture and need just get ultra dense and turn into an unplanned community. So the vibe and the aesthetic of those areas starts to depart from the familiar, commercial, semi-slick art deco look that you seen in the beginning levels. 

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.