Bioshock is another title I knew absolutely nothing about heading into E3 2006. The demonstration I received from lead developer Paul Helquist opened my eyes pretty quickly. It wasn’t more than two minutes into the demo before I was asking myself, “What the f*ck did I just see?”
I’ll set up the experience for you… the demo jumps right to a setting that appears to be in a building or room that is submerged in water. The place is obviously abandoned and there is a freshly-killed body on the floor in the immediate vicinity. Shortly thereafter, a large, lumbering figure enters the room. The best way I can describe him is the glowing scuba bad guy from Scooby Doo on a Barry Bonds-dose of steroids. The creature is responding to the sounds of knocking on a metal panel. He proceeds to a porthole-like door in the wall, opens it and extracts a little girl from the hole. The girl then walks over to the dead body that was there in the room when we entered it, stabs the carcass with a contraption and extracts something from the body. The little girl then injects whatever she just sucked out of the dead body. With that task complete, the creature and girl walk back over to the door from which she came, he picks her up and puts her back in, and the door is shut again. The creature goes on his merry way.
Now how would you react to such a scene? If you’re like me, it piqued your interest like a son of a bitch! During the introduction to this demo, Helquist stated he wanted to take this game to the next level and make it the scariest video game released yet. I don’t know about scary, but that was some pretty messed-up shit if you ask me.
Our host goes on to explain that the setting is the former utopia of Rapture. Obviously something has gone wrong with the city since there are very few living creatures around, and the ones that we do stumble across appear to have some seriously significant “character flaws.” The aspect of Bioshock that is stressed throughout the entire demo is the importance of choice. The former residents of Rapture apparently made some pretty poor choices, but now it is up to you, the player, to make some correct ones. The choices are definitely not obvious and they are not easy. Ammunition and resources are at a premium in the world of Bioshock, so a bad choice could have you joining ranks with the former residents of Rature rather quickly.
Such important choices are as simple as which ammunition to use against which specific enemy. Each weapon has multiple types of ammo, so using armor-piercing rounds on an un-armored enemy will not be very effective and a waste of precious bullets. If your player does spend those unwise rounds, he might not find more for quite awhile. Like I mentioned, resources are extremely limited. Don’t despair, there are several ways to battle each enemy, such as pitting multiple characters against each other so your hands won’t get as dirty. The “barely scraping by” concept in Bioshock is the one that intrigues me most about this title.
The interactive and reactive A.I. in Bioshock is another marquee feature the developers were pushing during the preview. In the case of the “Big Daddy” scuba-geared brute previously mentioned, he won’t bother you if you don’t bother him. If your character gets to close to him or the little girl he pulls out of the wall, he’ll become alarmed, then agitated. If distance is kept, all will remain well… at least with that character. There were a few others that will not leave well enough alone and if they see you, they’ll want nothing more than to “interact” with your character. To save on ammunition, there are some cases where you can trick a hostile enemy into attacking a Big Daddy. If you succeed in doing so, your character won’t need to lift a finger and you can watch him open up a can of whoop ass on your enemy for you… then he’ll pull a little girl out of the wall to suck out some of their bio-matter.
The developers wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t mention the water in Bioshock. A concerted effort was put forth to create the best-looking water and water effects in any video game on the market today. From what I saw, I wouldn’t argue with them giving themselves those kudos.
Bioshock intrigued me enough to want to play it as soon as I left the demo. The only negative that I can force myself to come up with is for a game in which the developers kept stressing would be the scariest game ever, I just didn’t see it. If they were shooting for a high freak-out factor, I’d say they were successful, but the horror just wasn’t there… at least in the limited playable footage that they had for us. Even without that horror aspect, I witnessed enough to make me want to get my hands on Bioshock as quickly as I can. Both you and I will have to wait until “sometime in 2007.” Bioshock will be released only on the Xbox 360 and the PC.
