TGS: Bioshock - Gameplay

What the hell is with this trailler... just stands in same spot for ages looking at the surroundings in on room... looks like it drops a few frames as well. :s

^There is audio you know

Big daddies? Little sisters?? Increase the size of sexual organs???
I do hope Irrational don't get into trouble with those terms and goals :)

But the atmosphere is great and I can hardly wait...

Looks very nice but to be honest it disappoints me a bit after all the incredible things that were said about it (this is my first look). What seems to set it apart from the mainstream FPS is a decent story, a great atmosphere (the music is very good) and the enemies with their 'own life' sound cool too. But the spray-thing, however useful and a nice gameplay variant, looks rather silly. And I don't like the way switches are flipped and goods are grabbed. I hope they add animation for this because it looks kind of odd and dare I say it, "last gen".

Btw, the holes the little sisters come out of remind me of Metroid Prime's spinball tunnels.

A little story goes a long way for me, the demo shown here has me hooked to find out more.

"I hope they add animation for this because it looks kind of odd and dare I say it, 'last gen'"

In terms of graphics alone, System Shock 2 was a little 'last gen' when compared to its piers, Half-Life in particular. Nevertheless, many gamers with taste ;-) enjoyed SS2 more than HL1.

The shooting has me worried, it doesn't seem to "shoot" particularly well, as in not much feeling to it. But the rest of the game looks very interesting.

The combat didn't look like fun and the alternatives to combat looked contrived especially after the speech at the start.

Fingers crossed though, it's only a demo and it doesn't show the story which was what made SS2.

Edit: "The shooting has me worried.." agreed, it looks rubbish - trying to track something that jumps around then runs up the wall isn't fun.

The voice of Levine creeps me out. It's not a bad voice, just ... creepy.

Oh, forgot to mention:

The game looks awesome.

Wow those water effects are........... just wow. Esp. the drops dripping onto pools.

I hope he didn't mean it literally ya know about those security bots "will keep on coming" thing. Nothing makes me hate a game more than infinite respawning enemies.

Anyway can't wait.

Wow.

Looks like it's going to kill my PC. Looks awesome to me altho I can see myself just trying to gun my way through. Hopefully I really will have to try other methods of advancement.

Les: You don't like the way the switches are flipped? That's a deal-breaker for you? These are the people that gave use System Shock 2 and Thief. Have a little faith.

Hmm, seems like an intriguing cross between Deus Ex and the Metroid Prime games.

Not quite sure in what way that's similar to Metroid Prime...

This game is kind of unimpressive.

After that incredibly boring introduction, and all the talk of interactive environments, etc., it barely seems better than DOOM II, or any other FPS from a generation back.

The little sisters and big daddies designation are just a deliberate attempt to get notoriety or shock sensibilities, and the comment that they "don't make moral choices" for the player is just a bad attempt to be a little "bad" and appeal to appeal to the GTA side of little kids and teens.


When you boil down the game play, it seems to just be
1) Shoot bad guys
2) Pick up resources and ammo (by walking over it)
3) Some things should selectively be NOT shot at.

After all that talk at the beginning, it just felt like Doom II (or even Doom I)... Walk around... go in a room... turn on a light by walking up to it... Something shoots at you... "crouch" behind bar as useless props (bottles) "interact" with bullets.

i.e. last gen shooter.

EDITED TO ADD: I'll wait for the reviews, and maybe it's eveything the narrator said it is... but I certainly didn't see any of what he was claiming on the actual demo. Everything in the environment is "interactive" but the light switch doesn't move and your hand doesn't even go up to touch it.

The game certainly SOUNDS great when the narrator describes it.

"Not quite sure in what way that's similar to Metroid Prime..."

From what I understood from the video there's an emphasis on exploration rather than linear levels. Hence the Metroid reference.

For those of you complaining about bits in the video Ken posted this on http://www.ttlg.com/forums/


The e3 video was a modified version of something we built in March for the first Game Informer cover piece. It was really the first bit of playable BioShock ever made.

We enhanced it for E3 and showed pretty much the same thing at Leipzig. It's now been retired for our new gameplay demonstration which we are slaving away on.

I'm saying this not to make excuses for anything you didn't like, because the videos out there and should be fair game to comment on and criticize. We put it out there to get people's comments on it. But for the crew here who are really into deeply discussing the game, I thought some notes might be helpful. Consider this the read me file for the E3 demo.

The look of the world of Rapture really solidified for the first time when we did this demo. Ditto water visual effects. However, the game has progressed substantially on the visual side since then. I think the next gameplay video will demonstrate what I mean.

The animation system is super rough. We're incorporating Havok's animation system mixed with IG's homebrew stuff.

All the voice acting came from an impromptu short session we did before the demo. The Little Sister will have a full suite of dialog, as will all the AIs in the game. Our goal is to have substantially more character dialog per character than even other IG games.

Weapon effects are first pass. We've just done a new rev on them. I think they are amazing now. Our goal was to exceed the weapon effects in Black, and I think we're going to achieve that (even adjusting for next gen)

Engine was entirely unoptimized. We've just finished our core optimization pass last week. As I mentioned another time, load times and performance were a key technical goal on BioShock.

Plasmid effects are first pass. They have been entirely replaced.

On screen and machine intefaces have not only been redone completely by a new artist, their functionality and feedback has been completely rethought. You'll see more of this soon (maybe I'll even leak a shot or two!)

There are 3 different big daddy's and a whole bunch of splicers in the game, plus skin, powers/weapons and even attachment variations (masks, hats, etc.).

We've hardly begun tune game controller/mouse stuff. It's just not something we do until later after we've done a ton of focus testing on our first pass.

One of the coolest visuals you're going to see down the road is views of the actual underwater buildings from windows in Rapture. That will be soon.

Regarding my voice: I'm not actually a serial killer, but I will be playing an evil clown vending machine in the game. I know you hope I'm kidding, but I'm not. I've also decided to use Jade Raymond from Assassin's Creed to do all our future PR work because she's way hotter than me.


Hope that sets your mind at ease.

I don't get the MP comparisons either. But it does look ALOT like Deus Ex, which isn't such a bad thing.

I dunno where you guys are getting the Deus Ex, Metroid Prime and hell even Doom II (wtf? Ok I mean fair enough the player has a gun and sometimes uses it to kill stuff) resemblances from. Reminds me more of System Shock 2, which is not surprising considering it's a spiritual sequel and all... Can't wait for this.

"Les: You don't like the way the switches are flipped? That's a deal-breaker for you? These are the people that gave use System Shock 2 and Thief. Have a little faith."

It's not a deal-breaker for me, but it would be way better if these kind of actions were properly animated. It's a game in which atmosphere plays a very big role. But judging from Farcabio's post, it'll be OK in the final game.

Hmm, I wasn't too impressed by the gameplay in the video. Mostly because the 'choices' seemed very simple and obvious but after reading the comments from the dev that Farcabio posted I'm looking forward to seeing how the game comes together.

The atmosphere and art direction are top notch though, so I'll probably buy it just to please my eyeballs.

To be honest, so far it looks more like the dreadful Deus Ex 2: Invisible Wars than the wonderful Deus Ex, never mind System Shock. The atmosphere is there, but the gameplay so far looks to be an empty shell.
Ah well, its an early build.

I've been following this game for a bit and I'm still looking forward to it, but I will say that I think the structure of the trailer was a mistake. Maybe I just wasn't in a patient mood, but it seemed to take far too long getting around to showing me anything new. I am also worried when devs say stuff like "our goal is to redefine...", because that just sounds a bit too unspecific for me. I still have high hopes for the game (plus I've been a fan of this type of game for over a decade, so its not like I "don't get it"), but the trailer didn't really work for me.

thanks for info from dev.. something extra :-)

There's alot more where that came from, he also took the time to inform us that:

Real game will have dynamic fire lighting, spreading, and extinguishing.

There will be some form of frob hilight.

We're figuring out what to do with cameras. there does need to be feedback. feel free to make suggestions. (For those of you that thought the cameras were a bit too Deus EX: IW)

Not only will be there a whole pile of different splicers, they will all be able to use any splicer power, and there will be numerous varities of each, utilizing different skins, attachments, hats, masks, voices, etc.

AIs use some machines in the game, just like you.

Q. Large Environments - are we going to get large galleries with glass celings the size of train stations? or are all the rooms smaller scale like DeX2 or deadly shadows?

A. In fact, we even have large glass ceilinged train stations (Well, they're bathysphere stations...)

Loading screens: The issue you bring up killed IW for me, a game I loved the idea of and was damaged by technical problems (performance, load times ). This all comes under performance, and as I've said before, performance on the target platform was one of our key technical goals.

We have an IG built texture and sound streaming system. This allows us to do several things:

1) higher texture density in a single load
2) less frequent loads because of same
3) the kind of sound scape density you expect from a game like BioShock

Epic's streaming wasn't feasible with our time line and design choices.


When I say accessible an interview, here are some things some of you might think I mean:

No ammo types.
No character growth.
No hacking.
No logs.
No open-ended level layouts.
No difficulty.
No weapon mods.
No research system.
No limited resources.
No ghosts.
No dozens and dozens of plasmids.
No radically different play styles.

This is, of course, a filthy, filthy lie.

Here's what Irrational is doing to make BioShock accessible.

1) Dynamic Training. This is the big investment we're making, and we believe it's a key element to bringing deeper games to non-core gamers. And for the rest of you, it's our stake to the heart to tutorial-itis. It's a system that watches how you play and dynamically genereates advice to point you towards game play options you might be missing ("hey, ever thought of hacking?"), systems you might be using wrong ("hey, how about some armor piercing rounds on that bot!", or even game systems you just don't get ("hey that's 12 security cameras you've been spotted by in a row. want to learn more about the security system?"). You can, of course, turn this system off if you don't like it.

2) It's going to be pretty! Guess what: Shock 2 having ugly character models and no translucency in our sprites was not a design choice!

3) People who play the game guns blazing will have a AAA experience as well. In Shock 2, we don't think we really were fair to the guns guys. Without compromising all of the systems I described above (hacking, crafting, research, etc), we're going to make things blow up nice.

4) Performance. I think a big barrier of entry on Shock 2 (for the mass market, not TTLGers) was the long load times and mediocre performance. One of our core goals with BioShock was making sure frame rates and load times were competitive.

If anything, BioShock is the deepest game we've ever made. Having real time and money to make it also means it will be the most accessible.

The research system of shock 2 has been replaced with a picture taking system, which I think is much more user driven than the research. We've also added a fairly detailed crafting system which we'll get into in a bit.

Add hackable turrets and bots (didn't have the latter in shock), 50+ plasmids, weapon mods and more, i think you've got a game that matches shock 2 in depth on a similar feature by feature basis.


That's everything he's revealed so far, he says he might leak a few shots.

I've also decided to use Jade Raymond from Assassin's Creed to do all our future PR work because she's way hotter than me.

yes. YES.

bioshock in motion! finally :)

"has been replaced with a picture taking system"

Please no, not another game with a picture taking system!!!!! Are there really any people that like those?!

"People who play the game guns blazing will have a AAA experience as well."

If IG can really pull all that off (different ways of playing the game and each of them being equally good), I'll be very impressed. But for the moment, HL2 Ep.2 remains on the top of my next-gen FPS wish list.

So, nice comments from Farcabio. The atmosphere seems to be great. I hope there are more monsters than the daddies and splicers. And why would all women choose to be splicers, you can do whatever with the genegizmo right? I would expect also male splicers.
Now I don't want to be irreverential, but as there was a sexual reference in the demo, would it be possible to make yourself irresistible to the oposite sex (splicers but not little sisters - that would be too much)? Perhaps an army could be raised with them - I would use them to fix the city and make a lot of children, genetically modified perhaps to overcome the decay of the Rapture.

:) *grins* or maybe not so many options in the game?

This will mop the floor with other FPS games. \0/

Loved the atmosphere, what with the music etc and deco stylings...
Granted though, the narrator didnt really manage to sell the gameplay well..

Half way through I stopped watching. I didnt see anything that made me want to buy this when it appears... meh :(

Cant wait for this, never played system shock 2 apparently its out of print, but am i right in saying a lot of these devs went on to make DEUS EX? MY FAV EVER GAME, and invisible war was also very good just a little dumbed down, i didnt mind the biomod system, it was the lack of upgradable skills for using them more than anything.