Fans of the Bioshock series can expect more Rapture action in the upcoming two-part DLC entitled Burial At Sea. Though no target date is set for the release, it marks the first return of System Shock/Bioshock and Irrational alumni Ken Levine to the underwater city since the original Bioshock.

“We are really excited to offer our fans the content that they have been asking for,” said Ken Levine, creative director of Irrational Games. “With the Burial at Sea episodes, we are building a Rapture-based narrative experience that is almost entirely built from scratch.”

With a $15 price tag, there should be plenty of content, but the wiser investment for some fans will be the $20 Season Pass which unlocks Burial at Sea as well as the recently released Clash in the Clouds DLC, a combat/sky line focused extension that takes place in previously unexplored areas of Columbia, the floating city featured in Bioshock Infinite.

Says Levine, “With Clash in the Clouds, people get a pure action experience that takes BioShock Infinite combat to its highest challenge and intensity level.”

Clash in the Clouds brings new enemies and offers 60 “Blue Ribbon” challenges that unlock goodies like concept art, and new Kintescopes,and Voxphones.

Burial at Sea and Clash in the Clouds is available via Steam, XBox Live, and PSN.

The ironically titled Coming Soon movie news website (you'll see why it's ironic at the end of this sentence) has reported that the Bioshock movie is dead. All ten people who were looking forward to it are now unhappy. The article goes on to explain why, but it's mostly irrelevant blah blah budget blah blah ratings stuff that we usually see attached to why someone's brilliant idea isn't going to be made: it's clearly too brilliant for the penny pincher and the MPAA!

There's two takeaways here. One is that some directors out there still think that they're somehow immune to the video game movie curse, that they're going to be the one who makes the first video game movie that isn't horrible. The second is that hollywood in general still seems to think that it's the ultimate in media expression. Some other creative work, be it a book, a TV show, or a game, hasn't "made it" to "the big time" until it's become a movie. Certain things "deserve" to be movies and certain things do not. I suspect that some feel that the problem with video game movies are the games themselves. They're not yet good enough to deserve to be a good movie, thus it's just a matter of finding that game that is good enough, and then they'll have a hit on their hands. I am pretty sure everyone reading this realizes how silly a thought that is.

I'm rather thankful that the Deus Ex and Thief movies died with ION Storm, and pray that Square Enix (or some strapping young director) doesn't get any bright ideas with the reboots of these properties.

IGN has a short interview with Ken Levine regarding BioShock. Of particular interest is what he says about the team:

Ken Levine: BioShock is also being created by the majority of the team who created System Shock 2 and many of the games which helped inspire it. This group includes me, Jon Chey (project lead), Steve Kimura (Art), Mauricio Tejerina (art), Nate Wells (art), Ian Vogel (design), and Alexx Kay (design). When Looking Glass went out of business (RIP, man, that place rocked the world and never got the credit they deserved), we were able to hire Eric Brosius (sound guru who created the sound for both Shock 2 and the entire Thief series), Dorian Hart (design on Shock 2, Thief and Terra Nova), Shawn Robertson (art), Darren Lafreniere (programming) and Sara Verrilli (design on Thief).
We're also incredibly lucky to have Robb Waters at Irrational, who not only created the look of Freedom Force, but was also the man who did the concept art for System Shock 1 and Terra Nova.

Add to this impressive list the idea that BioShock has been in conceptual development for quite a time while the team solidified and refined the game's identity and design, and I think it's safe to say Irrational is fully geared up to blow our minds wide open.

The only question I still have is "Will there be bugmonkeys?"

Because I'm all about the bugmonkeys.

I'm pleased to announce that our very own BioShock site has been launched, and can be found here.

We'll have all the latest news on Irrational's BioShock, as well as screenshots, videos, exclusive interviews (hopefully), and much more, so visit back often!

Irrational Games reveals their newest title in production in this article over at Gamespot.

Bioshock -- though not a prequel, sequel, or officially related to System Shock in any way -- certainly seems a strong spiritual cousin to SS2.

This is definitely going to be one to watch. You know I'm already excited, and so are plenty of people in our Shock forums