BioShock 2 creative director Jordan Thomas talks about the return of the underwater dystopia...

BioShock’s attention to detail remains relentless. During our first moments with the game in playable form, we notice immediately that Rapture has corroded over the decade since our first – and so far only – venture into the underwater metropolis. Rubble is strewn everywhere, a mean atmosphere hangs thickly over the surroundings, and the front end of what promises to be another thrilling venture into one of Rapture’s pocket universes, Ryan Amusements, sits eerily before us. This was our first reminder that BioShock, more so, arguably, than any other franchise ever created, sees every square inch of its environment as a key component of the game design. The city tells its story by merely being.

BioShock 2 performs the tremendous feat of connecting the dots to its famed predecessor, while still extending the existing narrative with confidence. This is a Rapture moving out of the shadow of its creator, Andrew Ryan, yet it’s still plagued with fundamental problems. Sophia Lamb is the city’s new leader, an arch-utilitarian and Ryan’s ideological opposite. In BioShock 2, you play the Prototype Big Daddy, the first ever successfully bonded to one of the franchise’s iconic Little Sisters. Someone has taken this Big Daddy, and, presumably as a result of this unknown person’s efforts, the Prototype has woken up with free will.

There are a select few creative talents within the industry that have the intellect and enthusiasm to summon absolute belief in their efforts. BioShock 2’s creative director, Jordan Thomas, is one of those people, a man who believes in the power of the BioShock IP and seeks to develop it in a way that adds new layers to the saga, while still maintaining the hallmarks that inspired such initial fervour in its context. Lamb could well be the centrepiece of the narrative experience; a smart, powerful woman, but seemingly no less reckless than Ryan. We got Thomas to take us through her creation.

“Well, it started by asking, ‘What would be compellingly different? What school of thought would inform Rapture in a way that would add new dimensionality and really change the original intent of the city?’" Thomas was a designer at 2K Boston on the original BioShock, and when the second game fell into his lap, he was free to explore philosophies he’d studied for the longest time, in order to create this new leader. “Beyond that, I have been interested in utilitarian philosophers since I was a kid, and [Lamb] is sort of an arch-utilitarian; an altruist who believes in the greater good above all. Now, people who study that philosophy have reached what’s called the repugnant conclusion: that you spread this thin enough, all of a sudden you’ve got everybody equally miserable, but at least it tallies – that’s what she’s falling into.”

WATER TORTURE
As a measure of how different her ideologies compare to those of Ryan, our first look at BioShock 2, taken from a fair way into the game, is set in a red light district known as Siren Alley. Much of Rapture has flooded, therefore the Big Daddy has to find a pumping station in order to drain the city of intrusive water. Unfortunately, one Father Simon Wales, a follower of Lamb’s, stands in the way, alongside a legion of Splicers on the hunt for Rapture’s augmentation substance, ADAM.

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