Relax, it’s a joke. Besides another game (that is embargoed till next week) I was there for one main reason- to check out Bioshock 2. They were showing off the game in a room off the side of the bar, and I settled down on a little couch and prepared to sink back into Rapture.
The start of the demo I was shown by some folks from the company (yes, another game preview I was not allowed to actually get my hands on!) was familiar to anyone who’s seen the recently released gameplay footage.
It’s not the very beginning of the game, but it’s a place somewhere in the middle. You’ve been apparently knocked out, and it’s soon apparent what the big gimmick is for this game. As you glance at the pool of water you’re laying in before picking yourself up, this is what you see.
Yep… you’re a Big Daddy.
Not only a Big Daddy, but the first of the kind- a prototype, if you will. This means that you’re faster than the ones you faced in the first Bioshock, and also able to duel wield. Plasmids and weapons can now be used simultaneously, a fact that soon comes heavily into play. You’ve also been deprogrammed- unlike the other Big Daddies you don’t have a Little Sister to watch out after, and your moral compass is completely up to you. Despite taking orders from Tenenbaum over the radio you can apparently choose your own path, if you kindly wish.
As he wanders around a bit he immediately comes into contact with the main new foe this time- the Big Sister. She’s the one who saw how Rapture was falling apart after Jack’s actions from the first game and took matters into her own hands, heading to shore and kidnapping children to bring back into the Little Sister Program. It’s ten years later and things have been getting a bit better, so she’s not happy with your interference and will pop up throughout the game to fight with you. You’ll never come upon her- but she keeps track of your progress.
You catch a glimpse of her and follow her down dark, dimly lit
corridors, and it’s here that you’ll realize that if anything, they’ve
got the same atmosphere intact. It’s creepy and foreboding.
When you finally catch up to her in a room with a big beautiful picture window facing the ocean, it’s apparent that she’s just been leading you into a trap. She destroys the supports to the window and the water comes crashing down on top of you, dragging you out into the ocean.
Of course since you’re in a diver’s suit you can breathe, and here things changed completely. The first indication was the music- dreamy and oddly comforting, you walked around the ocean floor marveling at the things you could only look at in the last game. There were some pickups on the ocean floor (audio diaries return) but for the most part you wandered among the fish and fauna as you headed to get back inside Rapture.
This is a conscious decision to give you some breathing room, ironically enough. According to the producers they heard complaints that Bioshock never let up, and the feeling of doom and danger became almost too foreboding. Personally I loved that aspect of the game but here they’ve given you these underwater scenes to give you a break. That’s right- you’ll never get attacked during one of these sequences- erase all those awesome dreams about fighting a blue whale out of your head, for they’ll never be realized.
He continued on through the (really quite beautiful) ocean floor and walked through an airlock. With a rush of water, he was back in Rapture. The area was nearby Fontaine Futuristics, a place not shown in the original game that produced all the plasmids that the people from the undersea world (Splicers) have become hooked on.
Around the next corner a familiar event was taking place- a Little Sister being menaced by a Splicer.
Head to page two for the biggest new feature in Bioshock 2.