BioShock 2 Is an Insider's Story

We already know quite a lot about BioShock 2, one of the big sequels set to arrive in 2009. The player will not be reprising the role he/she had in the initial game but will become the prototype on which all the Big Daddies that you have fought are based.

One of the main antagonists should be a Big Sister, focusing on agility and on quick strikes. The game will again take place in Rapture, which is now partly closed down due to the events in the first release.

But the team behind BioShock 2, which is being developed by 2K Marin, a different team from the one that created the first game in the series, is more eager to talk about something else than the concrete details of the videogame. Its members are saying that one of the big chances in the sequel is the way in which the experience is built.

Alyssa Finley, who is an executive producer on BioShock 2, told Gamasutra in an interview that “The first thing we did, and I think one of the key changes in perspective from BioShock to BioShock 2 is that BioShock was an outsider's story. It was about somebody who doesn't know anything about what's going on locked into a place and discovering it for the first time. And you, the player, are discovering it with them. The perspective change for BioShock 2 is that it's an insider's story. It's somebody who exists in this world and lives in this world.”

There will no longer be any pressure to create and tell a backstory using audio logs and other devices. The game world will be re-created to seem more familiar and even the gameplay might be modified so that the player feels how familiar the character he/she inhabits is with the space in which he moves. Still, the familiarity of the prototype Big Daddy with the world will translate into some very un-familiar experiences for the player.