Oh, Bioshock, how much is in this word. Fear from an unknown and new world, aesthetic delight with delight and the soul turned inside out during the passage-in the distant 2007 this game specifically shook my young and fragile consciousness. And in the same way, Bioshock also turned over the game industry, becoming the first representative of the Immersive Sim genre over many years to not only become successful, but literally capture the world. As a studio of Irrational Games, literally impossible? How thorny they turned out to be their creative path? About this and not only today and talk. The topic is voluminous, so brew the teaspoon, turn on Frank Sinatra on the background – we start diving.
Video version:
In order to evaluate the entire scale of the path traveled by Ken Levin and his colleagues, it will be reasonable to start from afar, namely from 1999. It was then that Irrational Games released their first game – System Shock 2, a sequel to the classics of science fiction with an amazing level of freedom of action for those years. The team enthusiastically took up the development of the ideas of the original, and even the assessments of critics were quite high. But sales did not satisfy the publisher of Electronic Arts, and therefore sent the series to the scrap.
Subsequently, Irrational Games has issued several projects such as Freedom Force, Swat 4, and also worked on the canceled Deep Cover and The Lost, you still need to eat something for something. But all this time, the studio was preparing for a large and difficult project that Ken Levin was not allowed to implement. He believed in the principles of the gamedic design and narratives that they adhered to when creating System Shock 2, and therefore their new game was supposed to develop all these ideas and give the Immersive SIM genre second life.
Such a complex game, of course, you can’t just take and do. Like any creative team, Irrational Games had to have a long path, full of trial and errors. From the first technical prototypes in 2002, developers tried a variety of options. Initially, there was a lot of genetic engineering, science fiction in history, and the delight itself was more like a space station, albeit under water.
The gameplay himself was initially overwhelmed by conventions, as if you are in front of you hardcore RPG. Access to various weapons and abilities was hidden behind pumping and other things that the player must do. As you know, this approach sharply did not at all give players that freedom of action and interaction with the world that underlies Immersive Sim’. And it was not at all what Ken Levin and his colleague dreamed about.
Therefore, the concepts were constantly processed, and the programmers had to suffer, over and over again realizing ideas, which eventually went into util. As a result, the leading people of the studio began to work more tightly with ordinary developers in order to avoid misunderstandings and waste of time on those elements that have already been abandoned. Although the disagreements in the team intensified in 2005, when the Irrational Games was acquired 2k and the state grew up, the game was already so close to his birth that no one wanted to retreat.
Original principles
It is amazing that with all the plot and philosophical depths, Bioshock was always the gear. The developers from the very most important goals sought: providing as much freedom of action to the player and the development of the narrative component in first -person games.
In the narrative element Bioshock, its complexity is of great importance. The player, if desired, may fly through the plot and an adequate and eventful story will develop in his head. However, for those who are ready to show attentiveness, the plot is able to tell much more thanks to audio recordings.
They themselves are not a revolution, for they were still in System Shock. However, Irrational Games approached the issue much more responsible. Not only are the records voiced by professional theater actors, but their value also increases with each audio day found. On a separate location, they are interconnected and tell personal stories of characters important for the plot, like Andrew Ryan or Bridget Tennenbaum, or help understand how delight has turned into horror that we see before our eyes.
Entertaining and terrible stories told https://neptune-play-casino.co.uk/games/ themselves to help the audio days. Interiors, the remains of its former luxury, bloody inscriptions on the walls and other designer details made it possible not only to expand the player’s performance about what happened in one place or another. The locations themselves intelligibly conveyed the atmosphere of decline, decomposition and madness, which was delighted.
The solution to the problem of creating freedom for the player was to create not only a large number of opportunities, but also situations in which the player could show himself differently. If you want to cheat – please capture the enemies, hack the turrets, go to invisibility. I like to swing enemies with a whirlwind – it is also possible, because the arsenal of combat abilities and their combinations allow you to effectively disassemble enemies components of the piles of enemies.
At the same time, the player’s freedom was limited very cunningly and only in favor of the plot, so that it was impossible to break the script. Key characters are always hidden from us behind glass or other obstacle, so it will not be possible to accidentally kill them. And the player is taken from the player only once, during a meeting with Andrew Ryan. Given that there is no Katszen in the game and we are always at the helm, the vile manipulation of Fontaine doubly hurts us, for this villain deprives both the main character and the player of freedom – the main value of a person on the philosophy of Bioshock.
The birth of delight
Ken Levin was first repelled from the creation of the principles of gamemeraduate when creating delight. After all, the most variety of opportunities is extremely difficult to provide if the game takes place in some real place, like New York. In such conditions, the player will always want to go in a familiar place, approach some seller, and these opportunities will probably not be provided by developers. Which, in turn, will inevitably lead to frustration and discontent. Therefore, the scene of Bioshock should have been as isolated and independent as possible, so that inside it the developers could already provide for where and why the player would like to go.
From the function of the world of the game, Ken Levin moved to his appearance. Since the Irrational Games was already engaged in the development of the System Shock universe, they had a full moral right to create their own, not like anything, setting. Therefore, science fiction was very quickly abandoned – it is difficult to believe and imbued with it. So the idea of placing players in a certain alternative story seemed the most successful.
Why was the delight in general an underwater city? It was this issue that became the starting point for Ken Levin in thought out the plot of the game. For Andrew Ryan did not just run to hell with the Easter cakes because he could. No, the concept of delight was the concept of the fact that the talented people should neither serve the state or belong to greedy capitalists in various fields. Creators must create and first of all for the good of themselves.
The underwater city was an epic dream, and therefore was supposed to look bright and pompous. The best option than to wrap it all in the architectural style of Art Deco, it was difficult to come up with. Gold, columns, some theatricality – all this promised the inhabitants of delight success and greatness. However, we all understand that such utopia is impossible, and therefore the whole city looks like he was destined to fall.
When thinking over the structure of delight, artists and left -winged -designers argued for a very long time, which is quite natural. For while some people think about visual diversity and how to impress the player, practicality is important to others and that could actually exist. Initially, the levels, like the monorails station, were very functional and clearly said that such structures could really work.
And then the developers came to the understanding that a copy of the real city under water, in principle, could not exist due to pressure at great depths, corrosion and imperfection of technologies. Therefore, delight became an incredibly colorful, impressive city, like demonstrating the boundless potential of man and science. But on the other hand, a bunch of glass, constant holes and water on the floor, flooded parts of the city, rust in all corners clearly tell the player that from the very beginning the idea of Andrew Ryan was doomed to failure.
In the course of development, of course, not only the world of the game has changed, but also its inhabitants. As I said, initially Irrational Games had a desire to go into retro-futurism with genetic experiments, mutants and all sorts of other things. But the further the concept went towards a unique vision, the more clearly the more mundane, but terrible image of Bioshock was loomed.
We can say that the most clear the creation of large daddy came out. The image of huge monsters in the suit of the submariner who defended the collectors immediately liked everyone in the studio. The appearance turned out to be both powerful and organic for the world of the game. Of course, the visual style of the costume was polished, but from the initial concept they did not leave far from.
But by the number of processing, the collectors of Adam went ahead of the planet, the very element because of which everyone had abilities and delight rolled to hell. Initially, they looked like incomprehensible slugs, during the murder of which the player would receive Adam to pump abilities. But not only did the connection of slugs and large daddy look very stretched. The developers quickly realized that their murder would not cause any emotions in the hearts of the players, and the moral responsibility for actions was one of the most important Bioshock elements. Therefore, they began to think and experiment.
One of the team members even offered puppies on strollers without hind legs … But such a banal way to squeeze out the players “Pouting” as quickly as he was thrown into the discussion. As a result, after monkeys, dwarfs and other humanoid options, the general thought found the image of little sisters. Thanks to the sweet children’s appearance and the player, it was more difficult to decide to “extract Adam” from them, and the attachment to them of great daddy looked and was explained more organically.
A further element, which took a lot of work, were the splaskers – mutating the locals of delight. In Irrational Games, they could not decide for a long time how they should look and so remind people. As a result, Ken Levin threw the idea to designers, who proposed as the references of the image of the “Facade Project”. In short – these were early attempts to plastic surgery for veterans and victims of the First World War, whose faces were seriously injured from fragments and other damage. It looks functional, but looking at the results of the work is terribly and uncomfortable. But such images helped artists in the creation of crazy maniacs, which we have to fight with.
Technologies
It is important to talk about the technical component of Bioshock. After all, it was a big technological leap for Irrational Games and a pinch of nectogen for the entire gaming industry as a whole. Before the new generation consoles release, namely the Xbox 360 and PS3, the developers were extremely limited in the fact that they could even do. New power of iron and pumped engine Unreal Engine 2.0, at that time you can already say 2.5, allowed to fully realize the extensive locations of delight and pump the artificial intelligence of opponents, so that they react more vividly to the actions of the players, creating unique collisions.
A lot of efforts of graphic designers and artists went to work with lighting and water, because they were supposed to become the basis of the Bioshock visual style. It may not be difficult to generate objects, however, to make all this smoothly and organically work, without bugs and errors, turned out to be an extremely difficult task. Fortunately, at that time, artists already learned the figure, so it was much easier for them to work in conjunction with programmers and convey their ideas to the rest of the team. In addition, Irrational Games in Australia had a whole unit engaged exclusively by the optimization of the elements of the game. Therefore, while some were creative and added, others worked tightly so that all this would not fall apart into pieces.
Sounds of delight
The no less important component of the success of Bioshock was the soundtrack and a general approach to sound accompaniment. The main leitmotif for the sound designers were decomposition and decline. Everything should scare, escalate tension and display a steady end of delight. A striking example is how automatic machines sound in which we buy cartridges and pump. The melody in them is old, disharmonious and its elements as if random.
The audio days tried to record as authentic as possible, as if a player was listening. Therefore, it took much more time to recording the votes and their processing than in the industry. Irrational Games specialists had to travel around the cities of America and catch actors. And so I really had to sweat, because the voice acting in Bioshock is not just a “soldier! Flash on the left!"Or some kind of science fiction nonsense. The audio days had to reveal individuals, make them as alive and believable for the player. After all, if we do not believe in those who live in delight, then how can we believe in the city itself?
The soundtrack created by composer Harry Shaiman can also be called extremely original. Taking into account the setting, no techno-empress and standard video game cheerful musical here and could not be. Therefore, Harry was invited, who loves experiments and is deeply versed in the orchestral music of the 20th century. Music was recorded using the Los Angeles Orchestra. For sound designers, it was important to maintain the naturalness of the sound, therefore, both tools and turning pages with notes got on the recording. Everything should sound as if a player is listening to a live performance. Thanks to the talent of the Shaiman and the Poddrot approach to work, delight began to sound avant -garde, sophisticated and unique, there was simply no other such soundtrack at that time.
Epilogue
Over five long years, Ken Levin and his Irrational Games have traveled a long way of trial and errors, overcame more than one internecine conflict, overcame a ton of organizational difficulties. And all this was not in vain, because Bioshock is still not just a good video game, but a cultural phenomenon, which for many has become an important part of life, but also an idea of games as art turned upside down.
Comments are closed