During my closed booth tour appointment with 2K, I saw Mafia II, Bioshock 2, and Borderlands. I’ve already written about Mafia II and Borderlands is next, so let me tell you a bit about Bioshock 2.
Bioshock 2 takes place ten years after the events of the original Bioshock and players are back in Rapture, the perilous, bizarre, and massive underwater city that we all spent so many hours in exploring and enjoying during the first adventure. During the course of the first game, Rapture was undergoing major change and even falling apart as players learned the truth about themselves and eventually managed to escape the underwater city. Assuming you got the ‘good’ ending from the first Bioshock, you might be wondering how players could even be back in Rapture, and that is good point to consider. In fact, players aren’t returning as Jack as you probably know by now, but instead you are a Big Daddy, the first Big Daddy in fact, and through some undisclosed means you have regained your freedom, your ability to judge and think for yourself.
Ten years after the events of the first game have not been kind to Rapture but it is still hanging on to existence, despite continuing to fall apart and still being overrun with Splicers and now, Big Sisters, a thinner, faster version of the Big Daddy that is actually out to hunt Little Sisters instead of protect them, like Big Daddies were designed for. That said, the genetic currency of Rapture, Adam, is still present in this setting and as a Big Daddy players must decide to harvest or protect Little Sisters, similar to how they did in the first adventure (although the specifics on how this will be done through the eyes of a Big Daddy were not disclosed).
We weren’t shown as much single player in this booth demo as we were multiplayer, which is being done by Digital Extremes, who have a fine portfolio of multiplayer success stories under their belt. One of the main inspirations for doing a multiplayer mode was the thought that different people mixing and matching plasmids and tonics.
The way this will work is actually fairly robust, more robust than you might expect. Rather than have a 2D menu for choosing your character’s appearance and load out, Digital Extremes has created an apartment for your character. From this apartment, you can customize your characters loadout, including what plasmids, tonics, and weapons you want to take into battle. The apartment wasn’t shown off very much, but it’s a basic, but nicely detailed structure with several rooms including a room that leads to a bathosphere, that players can enter to go into the game’s quick match find area.
There are going to be three multiplayer modes, one of which hasn’t been announced yet. We witnessed a basic deathmatch mode with about eight players. Each player comes into the game as one of several non-Big Daddy characters, armed with a selection of whatever plasmids, tonics, and weapons their current rank level allows them to have. Just to reiterate, you don’t carry everything you have into battle, you must instead create different loadout packages that you can switch between during times when you have died and are waiting to respawn.
We were shown just one map from the game, a remake of the Kashmir Restaurant from the original game. This remake has several different textures and a bit of a structural change too. Throughout the level, there are several turrets and even vending machines (we saw the ole Circus of Value ones). These devices behave similarly to the original experience, but how you interact with them has changed. In multiplayer, you simply hold down an interact button for about five seconds to hack a turret and make it shoot at anyone that isn’t you. For vending machines, you no longer purchase or hack these. Instead, an item or two from the vending machine will be available for pickup just by walking by it. When you take these items, a respawn timer starts that will recreate the items.
Other changes to the mechanics of the game give players the ability to use both plasmids and guns almost simultaneously. No longer is there a significant delay in switching between the two as there was for the original Bioshock, which was done for balance and it worked well — but that said, for multiplayer at least, in Bioshock 2, there is really no delay to using both. Furthermore, you can hold down the left trigger (this may change or be customizable) to charge up a plasmid — useful for catching foes when turning corners for instance. You can continue to hold left trigger indefinitely if you want and have a plasmid charged up, but this could make controlling the game a little tougher.
When Bioshock 2 was announced and then soon after set for a November 4th release date, it made fans of the original such as myself both excited and nervous. Bioshock was a phenomenal experience that really could have done perfectly well, as it did, as a one shot — creating a sequel under the same name could tarnish the series if it isn’t damn near perfect. Only time will tell, but you can bet we’ll await it eagerly this Fall.
