Lionhead loves BioShock and Portal

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 14 July, 2010

Shining examples of storytelling.

Seminal shooters BioShock and Portal are shining examples of great videogame storytelling and character design, Lionhead audio producer Georg Backer told an audience at the Develop Conference in Brighton this afternoon.

"The big thing that good story experiencing does is it's coherent,” Backer, who's currently putting the final touches to upcoming Xbox 360 and PC RPG Fable III, said.

"One of the games I love with that is BioShock. BioShock is completely coherent, in the art style, the audio, the setting. It's even so coherent that the game mechanics are part of the core story.

"The whole idea about Adam, and the powers you level up, all that is not just plugged in as a meta thing on the game. It is part of the whole story, part of the whole coherent experience, which was just brilliant.

"A scene in BioShock was, you walk into a toilet and you see a dead woman and a guy who had clearly shot himself with the words written 'I'm sorry' on the wall. Stuff like this doesn't add anything to the gameplay or the mechanics as such, but makes for a huge dramatic experience."

Backer isn't alone in his admiration of 2K's BioShock, of course. It's considered one of the most atmospheric games of all time, topped many game of 2007 lists, and scored 10/10 in Eurogamer's review.

Backer also mentioned Valve puzzler Portal, which Eurogamer gave 9/10 to back in 2007, as another shining example of videogame storytelling.

"Portal is one of my favourite games as well. The cool thing about it is it's a strategy game. It wouldn't need a story. You wouldn't need a story experience, as you would call it. It would work completely without one. But it makes it so much better with it. And they did it in two ways. They had one voice and a little bit of clever level design."

Portal's famous Companion Cube was, Backer said, evidence of brilliant character design.

"It's basically just a box with a heart in it. It created such an emotional connection with players by only using about four or five lines. He doesn't even speak. It's just GLaDOS, this weird computer voice.

"The interesting thing is the Companion Cube doesn't do anything. You walk through a level and you use it to solve a couple of the puzzles. There are other cubes in Portal, but they just don't have the heart, and the introduction from GLaDOS didn't happen. Suddenly you feel really attached to that.

"Portal is really evil because you have to incinerate the Companion Cube after you've been through the level. On YouTube there are clips of people showing you how to break the game in order to save the Companion Cube. This is just an example of a different kind of character design."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (24) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Pac-man-ate-my-wife #1 2 years ago

    The two aren't mutually exclusive.

  • sneetch #2 2 years ago

    "Seminal shooters BioShock and Portal"?

    Portal is hardly a "shooter" by any stretch of the imagination, Wesley.

  • M4RV #3 2 years ago

    David Cage would certainly disagree...

  • Mudo #4 2 years ago

    People aren't genuinely emotionally attached to the companion cube. I've always suspected its popularity is more ironic, consciously 'quirky', or just 'playing along' with the game.

  • Britesparc Verified Creative, ITV #5 2 years ago

    Nah, I definitely had a small twinge of guilt when I had to incinerate the bugger.

  • kangarootoo #6 2 years ago

    I didn't give a rats ass about the cube, but I found killing GlaDOS mildly emotionally involving.

  • sonicyoda #7 2 years ago

    @Mogs

    Agreed. It was obvious what was happening with those segments and in turn, it didn't add much to the story. I'd much a rather the story bother to unfold in front of you instead of all this flashback/hallucination bollocks.

  • kangarootoo #8 2 years ago

    "I think this article was written to bring about more uproar over Bioshock getting a better mark than Portal."

    I think actually that is not only the reason the article was written, but also why Eurogamer was set up in the first place...... no, not really.


    "Get your foils hats here, going cheap"

  • Stomp224 #9 2 years ago

    Bioshock 1 was an average shooter elevated to great heights because of its incredible attention to detail.

    Those moments like the one mentioned really brought the place to life. You could almost imagine what Rapture was like to live in, with people bustling about in those tunnels. The audio diaries were so consistently well written (and well placed) that the game completely sucked me in. No game has done that to me before, or since.

    Which is why Bioshock 2 missing the point entirely hurt so bad :'(

  • kangarootoo #10 2 years ago

    I really don't care whether Bioshock 1 and 2 were shooters, or something else, or shooters elevated by being a bit of something else. We get too bogged down in genres, especially when we use genre classification as a critisism (never understood that one).

    I enjoyed both games a lot. Overall I guess I enjoyed BS1 more, because it felt fresher (always a risk with a sequel). On the other hand, I thought BS2 improved pretty much all of the mechanics of BS1, and the ending was better on the whole (the actual ending I mean, not the "ahhhh, now that is clever" ending of BS1, which of course happened before the end of the game), especially the little sister stuff (can't be arsed faffing about with spoiler tags, so that skant description will have to do - I'm sure it makes sense to those who have played through it).

    So some gains and some losses all round. Still both very good games in my book.

  • paulf #11 2 years ago

    portal > bioshock

  • JayKwon #12 2 years ago

    Bioshock 2 had a great story as well, but less attention to detail I reckon, and it felt more of a fan service. But it was by no means bad. The sp was really good, and improved on all mechanics of BS 1.

  • Turambar #13 2 years ago

    "Portal is one of my favourite games as well. The cool thing about it is it's a strategy game. It wouldn't need a story. You wouldn't need a story experience, as you would call it. It would work completely without one. But it makes it so much better with it."

    I said this in a comments thread on this very web site and was attacked for it :/

  • Murton #14 2 years ago

    Bioshock was okay for storytelling, but hardly a shining example. Dead Space, released around the same time, beat it hands down in just about every measurable way.

    Portal, I feel is somewhat overrated. It's a good game don't get me wrong, but it was hardly a game-changer.

  • darkmorgado #15 2 years ago

    "The big thing that good story experiencing does is it's coherent,”

    Unlike that entire sentence, Backer.

  • Cjail #16 2 years ago

    How can Portal (story and character design) beat Uncharted 2 and Batman: Arkham Asylum?



  • darkmorgado #17 2 years ago

    @CJail

    Simple: Subtlety. Portal lets you fill in the blanks through messages left on walls and whiteboards. It makes you decide whether GladOS is lying to you or not. It seamlessly mixes humour into what would have otherwise been an incredibly bleak universe and premise.

    And I don't remember the Joker or Drake offering me cake.

  • metalangel #18 2 years ago

    Good heavens. Actual character interaction and genuine emotional involvement are better than farting 50 times at a group of identical looking villagers while your immortal dog who you can't get rid of barks incessantly about some worthless treasure it smells!

    I can't think of a Lionhead game that's had genuinely good characters. In what can only be an attempt to provoke an extreme response (so as to play into the 'morality' PM is obsessed with), NPCs are almost uniformly obnoxious and hateful. If the children shrieking the same lines and the women following you around to say "doesn't my finger look sad without a ring on it" in Fable 2 didn't drive you insane, the singing sailors in Black & White certainly would.

  • devin1488 #19 2 years ago

    Lionhead is in no position to adjudicate over what games have good story telling, considering both Fable games had goofy, dumb non-stories; and before that they only made sim-games.

  • Verwandlung #20 2 years ago

    ^Cool Air jordan shoes, the only thing I can think when I see Lionhead / Molyneux is make a decent new( or remake) dungeon keeper and or syndicate. Don't care about anything he has done since Black and white (1) .
    Edited by 1 at 15/07/10 @ 06:07

  • AphoticCosmos #21 2 years ago

    If Peter Molyneux likes what's "down" and "happening" with the kids, then nobody will care that his games are over-hyped and unpolished, right?

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  • geeza2020 #23 2 years ago

    All this love for Bioshock when Bioshock < System Shock 2.

    Surely anybody who has played SS2 would agree?

  • funkateer #24 2 years ago

    "All this love for Bioshock when Bioshock < System Shock 2"

    Exactly. Andrew Ryan is no match for Shodan and The Many.
    Bioshock basically copied SS2 (including all storytelling devices mentioned by Lionhead), left out some of the good stuff and put it underwater instead of space, but SS2 was so much more creepy and compelling as a whole.
    The artwork of BS might be pretty, but to me the whole premise and setting is just so not believable, so the story kind of doesn't really work for me. Still I enjoyed BS, but not nearly as much as SS2.