NowGamer gets an all-access pass to 2K Marin, for a rapturous demo of Bioshock 2

The chance to visit with a studio, meet its employees and discuss their work is a privilege, of course, but it pays to account for each party’s motives. An honest critic wants nothing more than honest answers, but the studio and the publisher want positive coverage, and that needn’t have anything to do with truth.

In some cases, it would only require a small step to the left for a preview demonstration to start looking like an extended sales pitch; no lies and no dishonesty, exactly, just scrupulously selected and expertly massaged facts. As a result, we often return from a visit with a developer with catchphrases ringing in our ears – pithy descriptions that both studio and publisher feel encapsulate some unique facet of their game.

With Halo it was ’30 seconds of fun’, Gears Of War possessed a ‘destroyed beauty’, and with BioShock 2 one phrase came to define the game above all others – ‘no comment’. We should be grateful. After all, you can’t massage the facts without any facts. After three hours of interviews, we were yet to discover the name of a single new plasmid, or learn about any new varieties of Splicer.

In a very real sense, we weren’t even shown the game; instead, a gameplay video was tailor-made for the event, showcasing all the ideas and themes 2K felt comfortable revealing. It’s somehow fitting that the sequel to BioShock should be represented by an idealised version of itself, we suppose, and the demonstration was certainly provocative, but despite our tenacity in digging for clues, the team remained steadfast in their silence. “We would be the worst human beings in the entire world if we spoiled the story for you,” argued BioShock 2’s lead level designer, JP LeBreton. “The story is really driven by mystery, and that’s the reason we’re holding off.”

Unless 2K Marin is blurring the line between gameplay and narrative to an unprecedented degree, we can’t imagine how a couple of new plasmids could unravel the rich, multi-layered narrative the game demands, but no matter. With BioShock 2, the details really don’t seem important. That’s what being told you’ll walk the ocean floor as a Big Daddy will do to a gamer.

A BioShock sequel was inevitable from the first perfect score, but its team were quietly day dreaming about the potential even before it had gone gold. Toiling away, elbow-deep in Ken Levine’s decrepit Gomorrah, the creative instinct must have been impossible to rein in. Like Ridley Scott’s Alien, the brilliance of BioShock’s design was that it hinted at vast reserves of unexplored history and ecology but kept the player at arm’s length from it all. By impatiently filling in the blanks, the team were staging a dress rehearsal for the reaction of gamers across the world.

However, with Levine announcing his commitment to “the next big project at 2K Boston”, it became apparent that the hand of another would guide BioShock 2. An entirely new studio was being set up in the verdant landscape of Marin, California, and for a while the uncertainty was enough to shake the faith of even the most devoted fan. Levine had always been honest about the collaborative nature of BioShock, but who could possibly take stewardship of such a singular vision?

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