A Taste Of Rapture: BioShock 2 Exclusive

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.

We spot an NPC Big Daddy early into the demo. This new breed of the Little Sisters’ slavish guardians, the Rumbler, has the ability to drop auto-turrets, giving it a multi-pronged advantage in combat. A furious duel ensues. The Rumbler is dispatched through a series of shots from the newly useable Rivet Gun possessed by the Prototype Daddy, as well as support from the flashy, visually upgraded Plasmids that remain a staple of the series. Shortly thereafter, BioShock 2 presents the choice that we, as dedicated fans of the series, travelled all the way to San Francisco for: harvest the now guardian-free Little Sister… or adopt her.

Thomas told us how the dynamic between the player and the Little Sisters has changed. “They have a father trust employed now, and the decision whether to exploit that trust and betray it or make good on it, even if it sacrifices some gain for yourself, is compelling to us, but BioShock doesn’t really judge.”

For the sake of the demo, 2K decided to adopt the Sister, cuing an almost cheesy sound effect and placing her on the Prototype’s shoulder. A little later on, upon finding a body that could be drained for ADAM, we got to see what happens when the Little Sister works for you in BioShock 2. It’s best described as a Splicer-ridden variation on the ‘Here they come!’ mechanic of Left 4 Dead, a nerve-wracking and difficult face-off with ADAM-hungry fiends that escalates until the Little Sister has done her work.

It’s simply fascinating to watch. Overall, there are immediately noticeable traits shared with the first BioShock, such as the HUD and art direction, but the composition of the action happening on screen in this battle is entirely new. As Thomas, who narrates during the presentation, makes abundantly clear, this is a level of threat that Jack, the hero of the first game, could not hope to steel himself against.

Before the Little Sister extracts ADAM from the body, the Prototype prepares for battle by setting Trap Rivets in the dead body’s perimeter and combining two Plasmids – Cyclone Trap and Winter Blast – to ensnare enemies, tossing them in the air while also freezing their bodies in the process. Beautifully, when one unlucky Splicer falls victim to this satisfying fate, 2K shoots the body as it tumbles through the air, shattering it before it hits the ground. That’s not to mention the Big Daddy’s trademark drill, a weapon so astonishingly bloody in motion that it’s viscerally gratifying to watch as it tears through Splicer flesh. It’s during this bout that we meet another of Rapture’s new residents: the Brute, part of a generation of Splicers mutated by an overdose of ADAM, and physically more imposing than the regular breed, as the name implies.

GAIN VS PAIN
Then comes the next, more complex choice when the Sister has completed her work: harvest, now that she’s bursting with ADAM, or rescue her, leaving her to scamper off, a normal little girl once more. As Thomas says, it’s sacrifice versus gain, yet with the knowledge that harvesting the Little Sister will bring towering amounts of ADAM under your control, you can’t help but feel like gain is razzing you in the face.

Thomas hopes BioShock won’t make such decisions so easy for the player – not every choice revolves around the iconic Little Sister, we were humbled to learn. “All of the moral choices that exist in BioShock 2 both pertain to the Little Sisters and to the unspliced adult characters you meet along the way.” Potentially, this could mean choosing to save a character’s life or not, among dozens of other creative possibilities. “We’re trying to reflect the player as much as possible, rather than say, ‘This is the good playthrough and this is the bad playthrough.’ But, we are aware that people play through multiple times in different ways. Our optimal case, for some jerk like myself who invests the kind of effort in multiple paths, is that someone will come back and be interested to know what happens if you take another path.”

When the player reaches Simon Wales, it’s a classic BioShock showdown. There’s an instance of exposition – we see that Wales has crafted a religion around Lamb, clearly revering her misguided philosophies and sharing her malice. Again, the relentless and metaphorical attention to detail becomes apparent. There’s a perfect shrine set up to Lamb, despite the fact that everything else in this location appears to be dilapidated. The battle with Wales, surrounded by protective Splicers, is over quickly. Now that one of her strongest followers has been murdered, however, the full attention of Sophia is on the Prototype Big Daddy. Time to meet her deadliest enforcer.

The build-up to our first sighting of the Big Sister was arguably scarier than the fight itself. Lights go out, water comes smashing in, and the expertly implemented sound design really comes to the fore, enough to change our mental state from tensely curious to mildly panicky. We ask Thomas to discuss how much emphasis is placed on the Big Sister’s grand entrance. “I enjoy waging psychological warfare against the players, to the extent that I can within any game. The Big Sister was conceived as very much a boogie man with an emotional payload, and she needed to be able to scare a Big Daddy. So, the way in which she affects the environment, the fact that she uses it when she decides to fight you – she leaps off things and picks up whatever she can find – was always part of the design.”

That said, when we remark that the build-up had more of an impact than the battle itself, Thomas ponders whether this was the focus from a design perspective. “I don’t know that we specifically said the build-up must be scarier than the fight. We wanted her to deliver on that front.” Indeed, the effort paid off. To escape Siren Alley, a nearby Brute Splicer is used to distract the Big Sister with the Hypnotize Plasmid; making a dash towards the exit, the Prototype wanders through a submerged part of the city. Bodies float overhead as he lumbers to the next location. One swell visual touch is a whale, swimming through what was Andrew Ryan’s boundless sanctuary.

BACK TO THE START
Let’s jump forward a bit, though, to our hands-on session nearer the beginning of the game. We’re sat there, controller in hand, headphones on, ready to revisit a world that, by BioShock 2’s February release, you may not have experienced for two and a half years. In the game, we start at the aforementioned Ryan Amusements, a propaganda-tainted theme park designed to bewitch the young into adopting Andrew Ryan’s philosophies and his view of the world.

Navigating through this early environment proves fascinating. The first discrepancy between the Prototype Big Daddy and Jack is speed. The Big Daddy is slow, due to its size – a Tonic can be equipped to rectify the situation, but it’s worth bearing in mind that speed isn’t on your side, at least in this early part of the game. A man called Sinclair with a Southern drawl – the man behind Sinclair Solutions, the company that created Plasmids – speaks of the Big Daddy’s search for Eleanor Lamb, who’s located in another part of Rapture. We’ll come back to these characters later.

It’s worth pointing out that 2K Marin’s demo of the game gave us a few tools to play around with that wouldn’t ordinarily be available at this point in the game. It showed, too, because we managed to take down the first Big Daddy with relative ease. First, we set up Trap Rivets, got its attention with the Heavy Rivet rounds that have a shotgun-like quality to them, then mowed it down with the drill, which was armed with 200 units of fuel, more than enough to make it an effective mainstay in any encounter.

The objective was to adopt the Little Sister, use her to gather ADAM from two separate bodies, and then purchase the Incinerate Plasmid. This time, after we had the ADAM we needed, we harvested her, curious to see if the visual effect was the same as that of the original. It pretty much was. Sinclair offers a word of sympathy, then we move on, again considering the possibility of what this variable choice will affect in the wider sense during BioShock 2.

The amusements essentially boil down to a brainwashing ride known as Journey To The Surface, alongside various exhibits describing Rapture’s formation. We see happy displays of a family outside a house and a scientist performing ambitious experiments in a lab; then, as part of the scene, the lights turn red and the big hand of the oppressors swoops down, reminding us of the ideologies that gave birth to this underwater nightmare.

SIGHTSEEING
The feeling that we’re seeing a different side of the same location humbles us. Thomas says the wider context of Rapture was considered, even while 2K Boston was working on the first game. “The city is immense – you look out the window and there are skyscrapers aplenty. The idea that there could be other places, both in DLC and sequels, always has an appeal. This is a place where the best and brightest were allowed to work in their own interests, unencumbered by law and religion, and that puts them in a position to really create their own private domain, their own theme park. So I always thought that we could go a number of different ways with that.”

Pipe Mania-style hacking is gone, replaced by a timing-based mechanic where players have to stop an arrow on a specific part of a meter, seemingly an answer to those who decried the constant break in pace during the original. You now have a gun that can decrypt security-protected objects like turrets, robots and such from a distance in real-time – but why the change? “It was not done just because some people became bored with it. Doing it from a distance was more of a countermeasure against feeling too bulky as a Big Daddy and not being able to do some clever things before the Splicers come running.”

It’s rather easy to forget how superb BioShock stands as a first-person shooter, independent of its fabulous art direction and storytelling capabilities. Rarely will you find a more aggressive weapon than the Big Daddy drill in a videogame, nor is there an act of violence as beautifully unfair as firing a Spear Rocket at enemies, only for it to send them flying backwards, jammed in their solar plexus, and explode. The Rivet Gun is a superb base weapon, too, customisable alongside everything in the BioShock 2 armoury.

All of this culminates in a Big Sister face-off. While this clash is part of the narrative, later appearances are determined by player behaviour, according to Thomas. First, we see her appear on the ocean floor for a split-second. Then, passing through a hall, the lights are smashed out before she appears in the next area. Since we’re overpowered and have seen 2K fend her off, we catch the objects she telekinetically tosses at us and return the favour, interspersing this tactic with Heavy Rivet fire and blasts from the newly acquired Incinerate Plasmid. This was a thrilling way to see out the demo, before we make a daring escape with Sinclair.

END OF GAME
Ryan Amusements was very impressively designed and paced, but even our enjoyment of BioShock 2’s tweaked mechanics couldn’t quash the questions rushing through our heads, particularly those regarding the narrative. There were three main talking points that gnawed away at our brains: the status of Dr Tenenbaum, creator of the Little Sisters; Sinclair and the mysterious Eleanor Lamb.

Thomas isn’t coy on the dynamic between the protagonist and the doctor. “Tenenbaum is aware of what makes the player special. Most of the Big Daddies are slaves to Rapture, automatons lumbering around and protecting the Little Sisters, essentially tirelessly. The player has been cut off his leash, and Tenenbaum knows that. That means that while she is fully aware that you were originally designed for a purpose, she also knows that you might have some resentment built up over the way you were oppressed into this service.” We ask Thomas if a decade of bitterness has decayed her at all. “She has definitely grown somewhat more bitter, because in BioShock 2, someone is making new Little Sisters. The redemptive arc that we left her in during BioShock ended seemingly with Jack becoming a harvester or a saviour of her primary charges. Now, that nightmare has begun to echo, and she has darkened somewhat in her pursuit of that cycle being broken.”

On to Sinclair, then. Going back to player expectations, Sinclair is seemingly your benefactor. Thomas is a smart man – surely, following the (spoiler) betrayal of ‘Atlas’ in the first game, he’s aware of players anticipating the same? “All I can say is that learning who to trust is part of the fun. I can’t spoil the motives of any of the speaking characters.”

Finally, we know that Eleanor Lamb is linked to the player’s motive. In BioShock 2, you’re hunting for the main character’s original Little Sister, who logically would be a grown woman by now. Thomas had little to share: “I can only say her story is very much part of the mystery of BioShock 2. The player was bonded to a single Little Sister in his past. Eleanor Lamb, as you may have figured out, is that Sister. I can say no more than that.” Let us not forget that she shares a surname with Sophia, Rapture’s new leader…

OCEAN COLOUR SCENE
Jordan Thomas is a difficult man to doubt. So succinct are his answers, so accurate are his perceptions, it’s tough to find an area of weakness in BioShock 2. Your place in this universe has changed, from unknowing everyman to brutish beast, while the storyline seems determined to upstage every comparable effort in the process. Thomas embraces the fact that such pressure is on to deliver, though, rather than cowering under the shadow of its now-legendary predecessor.

“I feel extremely lucky to be involved with BioShock. In my work on the first game, I was really given a space to go to my special crazy place. I owe those guys a lot for that trust. On top of that, I learned from them, both from the Boston and Australia studios. But BioShock is a new IP, which was the magnum opus of [both] teams, and my hope is that, in BioShock 2, I’m able to surprise the player and that moral choices have consequences they can perceive. I feel like it’s worthy of the name and [hope] that the guys who worked on the first game enjoy it. That’s my aim.”