BioShock

Jun 22, 2007

August 21st, 2007. After our toe-deep tickle into BioShock with our previous preview, the GameSpy team took the chance to dive headfirst into the game at Irrational's recent San Francisco showing. After hours of play, Irrational's representatives had to all but peel our team members away from our gaming stations. If it wasn't for the chance to interview Ken Levine, BioShock's creative director, we'd probably still be in that hotel room. And when BioShock's release date of August 21st hits, we expect to not emerge from it for quite some time. Whether you're interested in the graphics, the design, the ground-breaking combat, or the story, it looks like BioShock will have something for you to drown in.

My Parents Told Me I Was Very Special

As mentioned in our last preview, you begin the game as the survivor of a plane crash. Even in the intro, though, clues are ready to drag you deep down. Your character reminisces that his parents told him he was "someone special," and that he was meant for great things. Innocent enough, until he ends up in Rapture. And across the inside of both his wrists, your character has three-link chains tattooed, a mystery that Levine politely refused to shed any light on. And beyond physical clues, even the earliest experiences seem to reflect what BioShock has waiting for us.

When your plane crashes, your character is trapped deep underwater, struggling to avoid drowning. This is trickier than it sounds. When you're underwater, especially deep underwater in the dark, there's almost no way to find "up." Your inner ears are confused, your eyes can't find the right information, and you aren't pulled "down" particularly hard by gravity. What's stunning about this early, almost non-interactive sequence is that it really captures the terror of that situation. Never before has a video game captured the fright of drowning with such a perfect combination of sound and graphical power. The moment of terror peaks when you realize it's not a cutscene, and you've been wasting precious moments you could have used trying to find the surface.

Struggling to escape the scene, we realized that we had that same fear choking us that we'd experienced learning to swim (and nearly drowning a few times) in the Pacific Ocean. For the rest of our time with BioShock, that initial experience set the tone. We were in new waters, out of our league, but most importantly, coming from a world of "me too" shooters and "more of the same" characters, we couldn't shake the feeling that we were coming up for air when we needed it most.

We proceeded past the steps of the ruined bathysphere, knowing from our earlier preview that we were stepping into a world of genetically enhanced madmen and women. We knew that it was a world where the tread of Big Daddies and the laughter of Little Sisters meant to step carefully. But there were still more than a few things that we were totally unprepared for, catching us as off-guard as when we found ourselves struggling to reach the surface.

Dive! Dive! Dive!

The Irrational team warned us that the first level, which we played to completion, was much more linear than the remainder of the game. It's essentially a several-hour tutorial, and in its "heavily linear" gameplay was some of the most non-linear, intelligent combat we've enjoyed in some time. By the end of the tutorial, we had access to a variety of weapons and ammo types, but more intriguingly we had access to three different active plasmid super powers but only two slots to equip them. Tough decision time, but we retained electrocute, which we'd been using since the first few minutes of the game, and telekinesis. Giving up the other power we'd gained, pyrokinesis, was hard. But choosing between the ability to catch and throw explosives and the ability to do damage yet another way seemed so clear at the time!

So, we proceeded through the level, following the trail of a mad plastic surgeon. One of the most rabid followers of the underwater city's founder, the good Doctor had given up all grip on morals -- or symmetrical standards of beauty. As we found the remains of his victims, some of whose last words were scrawled in their own blood, we grew more and more disturbed. Even after we killed a Little Sister to ensure our own power would be up to snuff, we looked at the trail this evil Doctor had left and felt outraged. Like in the drowning scene earlier, we were completely immersed before we even realized we were sinking in.

We finally brought the doctor to justice, albeit haltingly, since we had no pyrokinesis to light the pools of fuel in his ruined operations theater and he was too sharp to step into our electrocuted pools of water (we had to fall back to hacked turrets). But when we did put him down, we felt like we'd done something right, despite all the blood on our hands.

Although the game clearly takes place in the first-person perspective, the smooth inclusion of plasmid powers invigorates the whole experience beyond the rules of what an FPS can be. If BioShock can maintain that level of energy, that level of rewarding and even ground-breaking combat throughout the game, it would already be a game well worth waiting for. But the moral element, the storytelling that happens as quietly or as loudly as you like around you, is so full of promise that even if it falters after the first mission, you'll have gotten plenty of value to justify your purchase.

As explained by Levine, the Little Sisters are unable to be killed in combat. They simply carry too much of the super-power granting Adam for mere combat to fell them. But when you defeat their Big Daddy guardians, you have the choice of either taking a mere pinch of Adam from them or taking all they have to offer. If you take all they have, they'll die -- but you'll have a great deal more Adam to trade in at the convenient boost vending machines. We should make clear that they won't just die: you'll pick up this child (or perhaps monster, merely shaped like a child), and she will wriggle and cry and attempt to get away, and as she shrieks in fear the screen hazes over. When it's done, there's no more Little Sister -- just her extracted Adam. It's an evil, difficult thing to do -- the price of power.

You Gotta Be One of the Good Guys, Son

But it isn't just power that might drive you. Your radio-only guide begs you to kill the Little Sisters so that you can both put them out of their misery and gain the power to rendezvous with his family, the power to help him save them and escape. And arguing for the Little Sister's survival is the same mad woman who took little girls and turned them into these monsters, apparently to ensure that Rapture had the Adam it needed. She promises to reward you if you spare her creations, but can you trust someone who would do this to children? And both hidden and in plain sight, the magnetic ghosts of the cities residents lurk as audio tape diaries.

Like ghost stories that haunt your walk, the audio diaries are generally terrifying. The janitor discussing frozen pipes and leaking ocean water is the most innocuous of the set, but taken in the context of the ruinous horror that has befallen Rapture, his words are grim prophecy. Listening to the Doctor's patients describe how he's promised to make them "beautiful," or even worse, hearing the audio monitor as he operates on a patient is professional style horror. If you're vigilant about collecting the diaries, you'll have a much better idea of what you're getting into when you kill your first Little Sister -- you might even decide to let her live.

Although we were able to delve further into the depths of BioShock, this is where we'll draw our diving record to a close. Hopefully this glimpse was enough to show you why the GameSpy offices are buzzing with excitement for August 21st, as we count the days to find out if BioShock can deliver over an entire game what it has already promised over a few hours of gameplay.