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Reply With QuoteAh, so that's what the 'Holding Thread' was for. Thanks, David!
When I say 'I interviewed' I mean I emailed him a bunch of questions other people much more talented that I thought up. On the plus side he did ring me up to introduce himself, which was pretty odd as I'd have thought that, if anything, it would have been the other way around.
http://www.sshock2.com/bioshock/inte...onaljuly06.asp
I'd like to thank Ken and Joe of Irrational and Tom of Evolve, they've been great!Earlier in the year one of Irrational's PR guys contacted me wondering if we'd like to send a few interview questions to Irrational.
After emailing back HELL YES the TTLG staff started coming up with some questions. We also solicited questions from our forum readers too.
We whittled the submissions down to 13 questions, getting rid of anything that vaguely resembled "ru putting monkies in bioshock lol" as, let's face it, they're a) probably not terribly interesting and b) Irrational won't be giving any specific details about BioShock out for quite a while.
The thirteen questions were further slimmed down to six as Irrational are 'super busy'.
Ah, so that's what the 'Holding Thread' was for. Thanks, David!
Finally, I've been waiting since they were dispatched
Ahhh, neat! I especially like when Ken mentions their problems with dynamic storyline/characters - is it only me or does it sound like they're going to try and tackle that beast?
Btw, David: The link in the news post goes to the interview, but if you click "interviews" in the navi bar on the left it takes you to http://www.sshock2.com/bioshock/interviews/ in which the interview isn't listed yet.
Cool interview. A little sparser than answers in some of the magazine interviews, but what we got was all interesting.
I liked the answer that a game's tension can be created in putting the PC caught between pulling ideologies.
I got a little confused by this comment:
What's he trying to say here? I mean, I get what he's literally saying, but I thought, e.g., that the Thief series, the Dark Project in particular, had quite a good narrative thread. And how does this comment tie into the fact that a "walkthrough would be useless"? Does he mean that it's a trade-off between good story and player freedom (no walkthrough)? Or something else?What the microprocessor can't do is write a single line of interesting story. It can't create a single compelling character. It wouldn't know a plot twist if it woke up in bed with one.
The answer on the moral choice was also a good one, I think. (I have more thoughts about this but have to run for now...)
And by the way:
I did the original plot for Thief, I tried to make Garrett (or Palmer, as he was originally known)!
If there was sparseness, blame it on the fact that the magazine interviews are usually recorded, not through email. I'm a very lazy man and all that writing causes me to swoon...Originally Posted by demagogue
Cool interview. A little sparser than answers in some of the magazine interviews, but what we got was all interesting.
We're toying with the idea of doing an audio interview format in the future, which we can generate a transcript from for those who don't do the audio thing. Whatcha you guys think?
-kl
I really liked Ken's idea of people doing bad things out of need. One thing that irked me a little about most "evil" paths in RPG's is that you're usually doing it because you're a jerk.
I can't wait to make some tough decisions.
I didn't know Garrett's original name was Palmer (), but if you watch the Thief credits Levine's credited to "Initial Design and Story Concepts."
I enjoyed his discussing some of the design elements in terms of Thief. Perhaps I've just missed it, but I haven't seen him mention much about his time with Thief before...
So this means we can expect clean, concise writing in BioShock?
I'd love it. Sometimes the tone and inflection of a person's voice can communicate more nuance than just their words alone. Of course, seeing their expressions and mannerisms can help, too.
I hope I'm required to make tough decisions with consequences -- both ethically and within the gameplay mechanic. I loved that aspect of the player development in System Shock 2; if BioShock can tie those player development choices and consequences to an ethical theme... wow.
I'm guessing this is sort of a comment on the move toward procedurally generated stuff in games. You can have the cpu itself make worlds and animations, and have AI complex enough for cool emergent behaviours that give a feeling of interacting with a real world, but you can't have a story generated on the fly by the computer. So the trick becomes balancing the elements where you basically have to turn off all the cool AI stuff in order to keep the story going, with letting the world simulation have free reign in order give a different enough experience for different people playing the same game that a walkthrough wouldn't work.
Exactly, Faf. This is what I meant in my post, but well... I think I could glimpse the word "yet" somewhere between the lines. That's of course wishfull thinking.
I'd love that. Emotions are better conveyed in speech, and we're talking about an emotive game.
I love that quote.The Big Daddys and Little Sisters are real to me, and they're real to the team.
Spot the GBM question a mile off.
Great Interview,
I'm very much looking forward to Bioshock
Excellent, I'm glad to have finally been able to read the interviewToo bad it's a little short, but it's good that they're really busy. That community manager thing sounds spot on. Just a random though, what I think would be awesome is if they started a developer diaries page or something. I'm so damn curious about the water and lighting tech, I'd love really technical (over-my-head) ramblings, Carmack style, of the latest hurdle or achievement.
That'd be great
I don't think he's saying anything other than, of all the different aspects of the game that contribute towards that goal, story is the hardest thing to nail down in a game of this nature. All the other components can be handled by the game engine but story is down to the writers, and all the things that come with that (trade-off, etc).
Wow. That was... totally not worth the wait.
Question #1 told us what we already knew.
Question #2 rambled on about why Ken likes art deco.
Question #3 wasn't even about BioShock.
Question #4 states the obvious.
Question #5 reveals that in Ken's head, Garrett IS a murderer.
Question #6 just repeats what's already been said in other interviews.
In the end, reading that did not leave me with the impression that I'd learned anything new about Bioshock.
Do you think bad questions were picked or bad answers were given?
Personally I wasn't expecting any real news on Bioshock, and Ken gave more in-depth answers to better questions than I see in gaming magazines or on sites like IGN. I'm satisfied with the answers.
Maybe I haven't been keeping up with Bioshock as much as you but I thought it was an awesome interview with, if not new information exactly, pretty damn interesting exposition and background on some of the stuff we already knew. Actually I especially liked the new information on Thief that I didn't know before (his name was Palmer, merchants hiring Garrett to kill Ramirez).
But I'm pessimistic. There's been too many bitter disappointments when it comes to "sure things" lately. Who would have thought Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2 would suck as much as they did? And don't forget [Insert Your Favorite Sucky Sequel to Awesome Game Here]? There are Forces at work which pervert the noblest intentions in games. All of Ken Levine's descriptions, as magical and inspiring as they are, won't mean squat if Irrational is forced to water down the game for a mass audience, squeeze it into a console, and simplify it for a controller.
ZB, you must know that details regarding the game aren't likely to be forthcoming and therefore the questions seemed to be more geared towards understanding where Ken's coming from with regards to his philosophy on horror, character and story. It left me in no doubt that he's definitely trying to push the boundaries of story-telling, moral involvement and AI-advancements, any specifics would simply not be offered so I don't know what you were looking for.
Thing is, the building blocks of all that content are still made by humans. Spore isn't a randomly generated game in any sense, it's a well thought-out and thoroughly art-directed game that uses synthesis to fill in the cracks. People have this idea that computers "generate" stuff out of thin air, when "generate" is a total misnomer. Humans create the algorithms and the content (and the hardware it runs on!) and the machines carry it out like the world's most complicated chess pieces.
Ken's point might just be that you can throw horsepower at the task of creating a big cool world full of stuff to do, but advances in design and story happen only via advances in human creativity. Which is very true, and good advice for developers and gamers who make the mistake of thinking that Moore's Law will solve all of their problems and fulfill their deepest wishes. The latest generation of consoles are proof that it will only really buy you more pixels. As ever, it's how you use those pixels.
I completely agree. I mean it got to the point where I thought they weren't even going to do it. Then we get the questions cut down to six, and all of the answers are just rehash of other interviews.
If they didn't have the time I would have prefered not getting anything at all instead of copying and pasting his answers from his other interviews.
Fixed dat 4 uSpot the GBM questions a mile off.
Hmm, I can honestly say I don't think those questions were anything like others that have been asked in previous interviews. Regardless, we split the interview into parts. We'll do what we can to get the other questions answered. As it stands, though, I'd personally rather the team make a hell of a game than spend all their time doing interviews.
Completing a Q&A isn't just a 10-minute task; I know that before I got into the business, I thought that way... but an interview can take a fair bit of time away from development.
The game's still a ways out... lots of time left for more info.
Based on the context of this interview, I was expecting something far more informal and raw... the sort of off-the-cuff Q&A that someone visiting Irrational and actually playing around with Bioshock might engage in. Instead we got the standard "how clever of an interviewer can I be?" style wankery.
But hey, I got what I paid for.
Ditto for the recent PC Gamer piece. Now that was informative!
More like just the opposite. It's the difference between a cold emailed interview where you can't help but reflect and try to word your answers carefully and a one-on-one interview in person (as most magazine interviews) where you just talk off the cuff, as you say.
Anyway, I quite enjoy the "rambling on" part of it sometimes, even if it's saying things I already know. The differences in emphasis can sometimes open up new insights. E.g., the emphasis here was more on the "hard core" side of Ken's design thinking, like not allowing the player an easy out from tough moral choices, and being severe with the space of choices to really push how the player makes them. It's a theme we've heard before, but not with this same emphasis. Also, it points to a kind of shift from the "younger, angrier" Ken of System Shock where "hard core" meant more, harder to reach turret guns (that is, "harder" gameplay) ... to Bioshock where there is a much greater emphasis on AI and making hard choices.
So I could erect a nice picket fence, I had an old hedge excavated at home recently. I still feel bad for the hedgehogs which lived there, I'd seen them coming and going during the night; still, I tore their world apart. It was something that I wanted to do but there was no need. I wonder what's become of them...BioShock will work a treat on people like me.
Emily Ridgway?
Eric Brosius?
Thanks for the efforts from everyone in regards to this interview.
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