BioShock appears as the cover story in this month's PC Format UK (May 2007, Issue 200. The spine tagline reads 'Covered in bees' - an allusion to BioShock).
Inside is an eight page article with some new tidbits and some great new artwork. One such piece is on the cover (shown above). I'd love to get my hands on some of this artwork without it being covered in magazine stuff.
The game is incorrectly referred to as 'Bioshock' throughout the article, but hey. I'll let that pass.
"What makes BioShock different? Well it gives the player a whole number of ways to do nasty shit to his enemies" - Ken Levine, Irrational Games.
It's reiterated that the interfaces for the PC and Xbox 360 have been designed for each platform, they are not ports. It goes into a little more detail saying the PC interface features some drag and drop.
There's a detail I don't recall reading elsewhere. There is a good guy in the game. Tennenbaum, originally a subject of Josef Mengele's inhuman experiments at Aushwitz, she developed incredible scientific powers and began working with the Nazis. After the war she joined the Rapture project and subsequently discovered Adam.
You don't have to kill or harvest from the Little Sisters - you can use your newfound genetic mastery to remove the taint of the sea-slug from them, returning them to a state of normality.
Tennenbaum, now a reformed character may reward you with extremely rare Plasmids that can't be found elsewhere.
No longer is it 'kill the Little Sisters for Adam or go without'. Now it's a gamble
There's a small interview with Dean Tate, the Lead PC Designer at Irrational.
He says the game will take advantage of whatever hardware you have in your machine, however multicore processors (especially quad-core) will see bigger boosts.
There are low, medium and high settings for pretty much every effect in the game. These basically adjust the amount of 'clutter' in the world, which means fewer demands on your PC.
DX10 effects include some extra Shader Model 3 effects, as well as a more advanced interactive water system.
One of their programmers is currently working on a proper reactive rippling effect with proper geometry distortion and they're hoping that this will make it into the game.
There's a page on System Shock 2 in the replay section with a link to the forums under 'Community'
An allusion to Eddie Izzard, surely...Originally Posted by David
Am I inferring correctly that one of the things lower detail settings does is actually remove some of the debris etc from the world? Has anyone ever gone that route before? Keeping the framerate up by reducing eye-candy polygons instead of texture resolution or particle effects (though I'm sure that is all part of things as well) sounds like a great way to do things.
I meant the BioShock article. They mention the CGI trailer with the bees shooting out of the guy's arms.
o rite
I actually forgot about that
You sure they're not hornets? They looked like hornets. Hornets would be way cooler than bees, because it takes like a dozen bees to kill a hornet, and hornets can also sting multiple times, as opposed to once per bee. Bees die when they're even near a cellphone or whatever is causing that. Weaksauce. Also, hornets can sting AND bite at the same time. Radical! Hornets would kick bees' asses any time.
In short, I'd like some hornets in BioShock. What say ye, Elizabeth?
Last edited by Jeshibu; 4th May 2007 at 16:35. Reason: added one more reason why bees drool and hornets rule
Clearly what is required is the ability to choose between bees and hornets. For this choice to be meaningful it must be permanent (you should not be able to swap between bee and hornet plasmids) and as you say hornets must be better than bees so that I will feel smart by making the right choice.
I'm just hoping the DX10-specific features aren't too important, because I don't feel like buying a new OS that I really, really don't want just because Microsoft is being a ninny and not releasing DX10 for Windows XP.
'Fraid not. Nasty way to go, no?
I hate wasps....
Some bees engage in pretty decent home base defense strategy against guys like wasps and hornets.
That said, what I'd really be afraid of is something like those wasps that can basically mind-alter cockroaches and drive them around so that they can lay eggs in them. Augh.
Pshaw. Like I said, bees have to swarm a single hornet with a whole lot of bees before it even thinks of croaking. Also,'Fraid not. Nasty way to go, no?
Every Hornet takes at least a few bees with him to the grave, and it takes loads of bees to overheat a hornet. Hornets are still way superior and awesome.
David, thanks for the heads-up and the summary.You don't have to kill or harvest from the Little Sisters - you can use your newfound genetic mastery to remove the taint of the sea-slug from them, returning them to a state of normality.
Tennenbaum, now a reformed character may reward you with extremely rare Plasmids that can't be found elsewhere.
No longer is it 'kill the Little Sisters for Adam or go without'. Now it's a gamble
Just a suggestion: what I have quoted above, I would consider spoilers. You might want to add spoiler tags from now on when you get into story elements of the game. This is actually a part of the story I would have preferred to "discovered" on my own, or at least learned about by making the conscious decision to read past a spoiler tag.
Cheers,
Michael
http://3suns.blogspot.com/
I would have thought 'here be spoilers' in the thread title would have sufficed.
I'm curious as to what happens to them after you save them, and what a Big Daddy's reaction might be to a cured Little Sister.
DOH! David, I didn't see that. DOH!
It most definitely is sufficient. Good stuff. Again, thanks for the summary.
I haven't kept up with all the details, so take2 backed down again after this, or it was a lie to begin with?
It looks like the report came from a financial report and that 2K didn't officially tell anyone anything.
When arranging the community interview I explicitly asked whether it was Bioshock or BioShock and was told that the latter was correct.
If you check out the legal information on the various 2K BioShock sites you'll see that it is referred to as 'BioShock' throughout.
I see they were able to salvage something from the old Nazi lab drawing board with that character. I imagine him a later incarnation of a hero originally conceived in another world that was never to be, like they still wanted to preserve a little of that old vision in the new world.
I wonder what the thinking was behind giving us half the story for a while ... a marketing thing to generate a little buzz (looks a little edgier when you just know the details for half the story), or if they've actually been debating and working on what to do with Little Sisters, what exactly the other option might be specifically instead of just "an ethical option" (even if they decided long ago there would be another option).You don't have to kill or harvest from the Little Sisters ...
Bees have little glands that pump poison,maybe modified poison,into your body.Imagine hallucinogenicbee stings or stingers full of napalm or acid.
COOL
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