BioShock 2 Story and Multiplayer Hands-On Impressions

BioShock was an artistically daring game that explored a lot of mature themes, but among the most important was the idea that utopian societies don't tend to stay utopian for long. And as anyone who played BioShock knows, Rapture certainly fit that bill. This once beautiful underwater city was founded by Andrew Ryan as a place for people to pursue their own self-interests without the slightest trace of government or religious authority, but greed and unchecked scientific research soon created a population of citizens whose addiction to genetic alterations drove them to the fringes of sanity. In the upcoming sequel, you will have the opportunity to see the downfall of Rapture from both ends of the BioShock timeline. The single-player campaign is set 10 years after the original and explores what would happen to the city if left festering for another decade, while the multiplayer side will look at Rapture a year prior to the first game to see what people were like during that initial slip into madness. [Spoiler Warning: You'll want to have completed BioShock before reading any further.]

Those who have been following BioShock 2's development will by now know that the protagonist is no longer an outsider making his way into Rapture. Now, you're playing as the original Big Daddy after he has regained his free will. After having lived the life of a mindless drone for all these years, he is suddenly able to think for himself. This newfound clarity leads him to wonder what exactly has happened to Rapture, and in his confused state, the only thing he can think to do is find the Little Sister he was originally paired with. The journey isn't an easy one, though, because while Andrew Ryan may be gone, there's a new villain in control of the city.

See, a lot has changed in the 10 years since the original game. With Andrew Ryan out of the picture--insofar as someone whose face is plastered all over the city can be considered out of the picture--one of his old political rivals has assumed control of the city. Her name is Sofia Lamb, and she's someone whose ideas reside on the opposite end of the spectrum from Ryan's. She's an altruist with the motto "make the world your family" and believes that it's everyone's duty and obligation to help out the world around them with no regard for their own desires. That's all well and good, but like Ryan, she takes that stance a bit too far and ends up on the extreme end of the spectrum. According to creative director Jordan Thomas, she has taken control of the city by "spinning a collectivist philosophy into a religion for recruitment purposes."

Thomas led a demo focusing on a particularly interesting recruited figure. His name is Father Simon Wales, and he's an Irish priest who has joined Lamb's ranks to help spread her extreme beliefs. Naturally, this is quite a departure from the era of Andrew Ryan, who railed against religion in seemingly every audio log or propaganda poster found in the original game. But like the scientists and artists from the first game, Wales' original intentions became corrupted over time--something visually manifested in his dark, twisted church. From the ravaged altar to the hundreds of candles illuminating incoherent messages on the walls, it's clear that Wales' days as a legitimate priest are long gone, and he has become more of a crazed cult leader than anything else. Wales had evidently been splicing up, too, because he proved quite a challenge during this boss encounter. But thankfully, even the most genetically enhanced priest is no match for telekinesis plasmids and a gun that fires rockets on spears.

After this boss fight came a message from Sofia Lamb. The quick version was that she wasn't going to tolerate anyone going after her associates, so to prove her point, she tried to flush the player out by…literally flushing the player out. Lamb remotely triggered a flood to sweep through the Siren Alley area of Rapture--the city's red-light district, essentially--in an effort to drown the player. This sort of desperate act is a clear sign of what has happened to Rapture since the original game. No longer is Andrew Ryan in charge, still clinging to the hope that his life's work will turn into something great. Instead, we have Sofia Lamb, who's perfectly willing to ravage the city at all costs in order to achieve her goal. As scary as Rapture was then, it's a scarier place now.

Meet the new Brute splicer. He's not a happy fellow.

That's about where Thomas' demo ended, but we soon had the chance to pick up a controller and play through a roughly hour-long section from much earlier in the game. Our objective was a simple one: obtain the incinerate plasmid in order to melt a block of ice blocking a train car taking us where we needed to go. To do so, we had to make our way through an area called Ryan Amusements, a theme park filled with run-down animatronics displays. The park was originally designed to convince children that the outside world is a terrifying place and that they should never leave Rapture, conveying this message with scenes of families having their homes torn apart by the ominous hand of the government, scientists having their work destroyed, or farmers toiling in the hot sun. But over time, the park has become an eerie shadow of its former self, with once-smiling families strung up on nooses and display figures charred from fire.