E3 06: BioShock Gameplay Demo Impressions

LOS ANGELES--As enormous fans of the open-ended gameplay and unsurpassed atmosphere of the 1999 Irrational first-person role-playing game System Shock 2, we were floored to finally see Irrational's next game, BioShock, in action. Irrational's general manager Ken Levine was kind enough to give us our first look at the game itself at E3 today, and we were frankly thrilled to find that the dynamic gameplay possibilities and outright creepiness of Shock 2 will almost certainly be equaled (if not surpassed) in BioShock. In short, if you liked Shock 2, you're going to love this. Our updated impressions, with new notes, are below. Please be advised that this preview may contain minor spoilers.

The demo began with the player character having recently entered Rapture, the failed experimental utopia-under-the-sea where the game takes place. According to the game's story, Rapture was built for an experimental society composed of humanity's genetic cream of the crop, and everything seemed to be going fine until it was discovered that the genetic material known as Adam could be used to further enhance the city's already exceptional inhabitants. (But everybody knows you can't gamble with Mother Nature and win, and it looks like once the citizens started messing with their genetics, they lost in a big way.)

Levine explained that the use of the substance began very gradually with a few inhabitants attempting to use the stuff to improve their appearances, until it was discovered that Adam could also greatly enhance one's physical attributes and abilities. As the stuff became more and more in demand, it became much rarer, and eventually led to the breakdown of the sheltered community's social structure and to the creation of...other things. Your character arrives at Rapture just after these events have taken place, while the potted plants are still green and while, as you soon discover, the blood that stains the hallways is still fresh.

Apparently, this stratified society of haves and have-nots has been overtaken by a host of horrible, genetically modified creatures, though Levine suggests that the creatures may have once been human, which adds both a psychological and a tragic element to the game's horror-themed atmosphere (something System Shock 2 fans should immediately identify with). Even the city's technical systems have begun to break down. The sea has thus started to "reclaim" Rapture, as Levine put it, with water pouring through cracks in the outer shell, security systems going haywire, and everything falling into general disrepair. Similar to how Shock 2 heightened its sense of horror by introducing an element of isolation (since in that game, you were stranded on a starship in outer space), Bioshock will heighten its horror by subtly reminding you every so often that you're trapped many leagues underwater in a ruined city that has begun to spring leaks.

Immediately after beginning the demo, we encountered a "big daddy," one of those burly diving-suited guys you've seen in recent BioShock screenshots. It turns out these guys are the protectors of the "little sisters," which look like little girls from a distance but are clearly something much more sinister when viewed up close, what with their greenish, pallid complexions and grotesquely enlarged eyes. Interestingly, neither of these entities bothered to attack the player when he stood still and watched, and the daddy only assumed a threatening posture when he approached, without actually attacking (though when we got too close, it didn't hesitate to violently shove us away from the girl). Already we were impressed with the variety of enemy behavior beyond a simple "see player, attack" routine.

Levine explained that these behaviors are actually governed by the "artificial intelligence ecology" that his team conceived of, and described to us, in our first world-exclusive preview of the game. Rather than attempting to deliver dramatic moments with scripted sequences that can break in certain situations, the designers at Irrational have instead decided to create a set of intuitive, yet completely nonhuman, behaviors (such as the roles of ants in an ant colony).

Anyway, these little sisters work as harvesters, roaming around Rapture and extracting Adam with oversized syringes from any human corpses they find. What do they do with this Adam once they've harvested it? Why, they ingest it and store it in their bellies, of course. Utterly revolting, that, and it merely added to the unpleasant atmosphere that the demo did an impressive job of building as it went. This behavior is all part of the artificial intelligence ecology--little sisters process corpses for Adam and harvest the stuff whenever they encounter a dead body, and big daddies protect little sisters from predators, such as the antagonistic splicers, which we'll discuss further on in this preview.