14 DAY TRIAL // After confirming that BioShock Infinite is going to have a special 1999 mode, in which decisions made by the player have a deeper impact on the game’s world, its designer, Ken Levine, has talked about it in depth and expressed his hopes that it will impress lots of old school gamers.
2K and Irrational Games surprised lots of players when they announced that their upcoming BioShock Infinite title would feature a hardcore 1999 mode. In it, decisions like what weapons you use or how you modify them have meaningful consequences in the story and the gameplay.
As you can imagine, this led to quite a heated debate between old school gamers who were playing titles ever since the NES days, and newer ones, who haven’t experienced challenging games.
Irrational’s Ken Levine believes 1999 will have both fans and detractors, but he and his team are content with it because they wanted to bring back challenging experiences.
"This whole mode is sort of an attempt to have time not march on, to freeze certain things that we love in amber - those two and three-million dollar games for the PC that at the time could do things that we can't generally do in a modern multiplatform game," Levine told PSM3, via CVG.
"It's sort of our modest way of saying, 'Well, let's not just go into that dark night, necessarily, let's go gently into that dark night [and] see if we can keep a portion of our heritage.' I'm sure it will have some degree of success and I'm sure there will be some degree of not capturing that, but our hearts are in the right place."
BioShock Infinite is already looking like a different sort of experience than other, simpler games, with a story that delivers tough choices and unique characters.
Look forward to the game’s release on October 19, in North America, and October 22, in Europe, for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.