PREVIEWS
Elizabeth has powers that can be
used in conjunction with De Witt’s.
“Not the face! Not my
beautiful face!”
Now you’ve made Elizabeth
cry. Shame on you.
bioshock infinite
Latest Info Big Daddy’s big daddy on his most ambitious challenge yet
Familiarity in Rapture? “Not a good thing,” says BioShock creator Ken Levine, explaining why developer Irrational Games had to leave
Andrew Ryan and his rotting underwater
metropolis behind when it started making
BioShock Infinite. Luckily, the team has
come up with another location that looks
just as good: the sky city of Columbia,
where a network of dirigibles keeps a vivid
chunk of turn-of-the-century Americana
aloft. It’s got all the clapboard, Lincoln
masks, and bunting you could want.
Columbia is a world’s fair crossed with
a flying fortress. Fantasy aside, it’s the
perfect place to construct a game that
examines a crucial point in America’s
development: the period, bet ween
1900 and 1914, that saw patriotic ideals
curdle into jingoism, while the nation’s
experiments with its
emerging powers led
to labor wars at home
and gunship diplomacy
overseas.
If you’re used to
the one-t wo punch
of BioShock combat—
period weaponry in one hand, more
exotic attacks in the other—Infinite’s
chaotic battles are going to feel pretty
familiar, although some of the open-air
environments hint at a new emphasis on
ranged fighting.
If you’re used to the one-
two punch of BioShock
combat, Infinite ’s battles
will feel familiar.
READ ME publishER 2K Games DEvElopER Irrational Gameslink bioshock infinite.com
What has changed, however, is the
timing of your arrival on the scene.
Unlike Rapture, which had gone to the
dogs long before we first stepped from
our diving bell, Columbia is tantalizingly
perched on the edge of revolution, as
the leftist Vox Populi prepare to rise up
against the ultra-nationalist Founders.
The latter want to keep Columbia aloft,
while the former want to send it tumbling
to the earth—and that means Irrational
is throwing players into a city that’s hours
away from anarchy.
Can a videogame handle a genuine riot?
com
www.pcgamer.com
It’s certainly not the kind of thing you can
pull off with the level of set-piece scripting
that the original BioShock was so reliant
upon. Instead, Levine’s team has turned
to AI negotiations as the solution, creating
a dense mesh of NPCs that will constantly
monitor the player’s movements, talk
amongst themselves, and juggle a range
of different reactions to whatever you’re
doing. Pedestrians will watch for the right
moment to foil a mugging or buy a soda,
while angry mobs may choose whether
to hold themselves in check for the time
being, or to start breaking windows.
If that’s a lot of pressure to put on
behavior coders, it’s nothing compared
to what they face with Elizabeth, the
mysterious girl you’ve been sent to
Columbia to rescue. Part plot device
and part combat modifier (she can reach
into alternate dimensions to summon
everything from ammo to a passing train
for flattening enemies), Infinite’s leading
lady also sits at the center of Irrational’s
greatest challenge: to build a story-driven
game that hinges on a convincing human
relationship bet ween the player and an AI
being. ChrisDonlan
Release
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